Stafford stared at her, then burst into a laugh which echoed hers.

“And leave you here!  Is it likely?”

“Well, let us both go,” she said, as if amused by his obstinacy.

“Is it far?” he asked.  “See if you can manage to balance on the saddle—­I would run beside you.  It’s all very well to talk of not minding the rain, but this is a deluge.”

She glanced at the horse.

“I couldn’t get up—­I could if he were barebacked, or if it were a lady’s saddle—­it doesn’t matter.  Look, Donald and Bess are laughing at you for making a fuss about a shower.”

“Will you try—­let me help you?” he pleaded.  “I could lift you quite easily—­Oh, forgive me, but I’m not used to standing by and seeing a girl get soaked.”

“You are walking—­not standing,” she reminded him, solemnly.

Perhaps her smile gave him courage:  he took her just below the shoulders and lifted her on to the saddle, saying as he did so, and in as matter-of-fact a voice as he could: 

“If you’ll just put your hand on my shoulder, you’ll find that you can ride quite safely—­though I expect you could do it without that—­I’ve seen you ride, you know.”

He kept his eyes from her, so that he did not see the hot blush which mantled in the clear ivory of her face, or the sudden tightening of the lips, as if she were struggling against some feeling, and fighting for her usual self-possession.

She succeeded in a moment or two, and when he looked up the blush had gone and something like amusement was sharing the sweet girlish confusion in her grey eyes.

“This is absurd!” she said.  “It is to be hoped Jason or none of the men will see me; they would think I had gone mad; and I should never hear the last of it.  The shed is by that tree.”

“I see it—­just across the road.  Please keep a tight hold of my shoulder; I should never forgive myself if you slipped.”

“I am not in the least likely to slip,” she said.

Then suddenly, just as they were on the edge of the road, she uttered an exclamation of surprise rather than embarrassment, for a carriage and pair came round the corner and almost upon them.

Stafford stopped Adonis to let the carriage pass, but the coachman pulled up in response to a signal from someone inside, and a man thrust his head out of the window and regarded them at first with surprise and then with keen scrutiny.

He was an elderly man, with a face which would have been coarse but for its expression of acuteness and a certain strength which revealed itself in the heavy features.

“Can you tell me the way to Sir Stephen Orme’s place?” he asked in a rough, harsh voice.

Ida was about to slip down, but she reflected that the mischief, if there were any, was done now; and to Stafford’s admiration, she sat quite still under the gaze of the man’s keen, sarcastic eyes.

“Yes; keep straight on and round by The Woodman:  you will see the house by that time,” said Stafford.