“It was my fault.  You—­you were right about the horse:  he ought not to have slipped—­Where’s my hat?  Oh here it is.  The horse isn’t lame, I hope?”

“No,” she said, setting her teeth in her great effort to appear calm and unmoved.  “He is standing beside Rupert—­” She had got thus far when her voice broke, and she turned her face away quickly; but not so quickly that he did not see her exceeding pallor, the heavy droop of the lids, the sweep of the dark lashes on her white cheek.

“Why—­what’s the matter, Miss Heron?” he asked, anxiously, and with all a man’s obtuseness. “You didn’t happen to come to grief in any way?  I didn’t fall on you?—­or anything?  I—­”

She tried to laugh, tried to laugh scornfully; for indeed she was filled with scorn for this sudden inexplicable weakness, a weakness which had never assailed her before in all her life, a weakness which filled her breast with rage; but from under the closed lids two tears crept and rolled down her cheek; and against her will she made confession of this same foolish weakness.

“It is nothing:  I am very foolish—­but I—­I thought you were badly hurt—­for the moment that you might even be—­killed!”

He staggered to his feet and caught her hand and held it, looking at her with that look in a man’s eyes which is stronger and fiercer than fire, and yet softer than water; the look which goes straight to a woman’s heart.

“And you cared—­cared so much?” he said, in a voice so low that she could scarcely hear it, hushed by the awe and wonder of passion.

She tried to withdraw her hand, biting her lips, setting them tightly, in her battle for calmness and her old hauteur and indifference; but he held the small hand firmly, felt it quiver and tremble, saw the violet eyes raised to his with a troubled wonder in them; and her name sprang to his lips: 

“Ida!” he breathed.

CHAPTER XIV.

“Ida!” The name had sprung from his lips, from his heart, almost unconsciously; it did not seem strange to him, for he knew, as he spoke it, that he had called her so in his thoughts, that it had hovered on his lips ever since he had heard it.  But to her—­Who shall describe the subtle emotion which thrills through a girl’s heart when she hears, for the first time from a strange man’s lips, the name whose use hitherto has been reserved for her kith and kin?

She stood erect, but with her head bent, her eyes fixed on the ground, the name, his voice, ringing in her ears; her heart was beating almost painfully, as if with weight of a novel kind of fear, that yet was not altogether fear.  Stafford looked at her with the man’s, the lover’s eagerness, but her face told him nothing.  She was so ignorant of the very A B C of love that there was no start of surprise, no word or movement which might guide him; but his instant thought was that she was offended, angry.