At this juncture Howard sauntered out of the sitting-room, and he and Stafford went to the open door and looked out on the exquisite view which was now bathed in the soft light of a newly risen moon.
"It still has a smack of Drury Lane, hasn't it?" said Howard. "Strange that whenever we see anything beautiful in the way of a landscape we at once compare it with a stage 'set.' The fact of it is, my dear Stafford, we have become absolutely artificial; we pretend to admire Nature, but we are thinking of a theatre all the time; we throw up our eyes ecstatically when we hear a nightingale, but we much prefer a comic singer at the Tivoli. We talk sentiment, at feast, some of us, but we have ceased to feel it; we don't really know what it means. I believe some of the minor poets still write about what they call Love, but in my private opinion the thing itself has become instinct. Who knows anything about it? Take yourself, for instance; you've never been in love, you've everything that you can desire, you're clad in purple and fine linen, you fare sumptuously every day, you flirt six days in the week, and rest not on the seventh—but love! You don't know what it means; and if you do, you're far too wise in your generation to go in for such an uncomfortable emotion."
Stafford smiled rather absently; he was scarcely listening; he was so accustomed to Howard's cynical diatribes that more often than not they made no more impression on him than water on a duck's back. Besides, he was thinking of Ida Heron, the girl whose strange history he had just been listening to.
There was silence for a minute or two, and while they stood leaning against the door-way two men came out of another door in the inn and stood talking. They were commercial travellers, and they were enjoying their pipes—of extremely strong tobacco—after a hard day's work. Presently one of them said:
"Seen that place of Sir Stephen Orme's on the hill? Splendacious, isn't it? Must have cost a small fortune. I wonder what the old man's game is."
The other man shook his head, and laughed.
"Of course he's up to some game. He wouldn't lay out all that money for nothing, millionaire as he is. He's always got something up his sleeve. Perhaps he's going to entertain some big swell he wants to get into his net, or some of the foreign princes he's hand-in-glove with. You never know what Sir Stephen Orme's up to. Perhaps he's going to stand for the county; if so, he's bound to get in. He always succeeds, or, if he don't, you don't hear of his failures. He's the sort of man Disraeli used to write about in his novels. One of the chaps who'd go through fire and water to get their ends; yes, and blood too, if it's necessary. There's been some queer stories told about him; they say he sticks at nothing. Look at that last Turkish concession."
The speaker and his companion sauntered down the road. Stafford and Howard had heard every word; but Stafford looked straight before him, and made no sign, and Howard yawned as if he had not heard a syllable.
"Do you raise any objection to my going to my little bed, Stafford?" he asked. "I suppose, having done nothing more than clamber about a river, get wet through, and tramp a dozen miles over hills, you do not feel tired."
"No," said Stafford, "I don't feel like turning in just yet.
Good-night, old man."
When Howard had gone Stafford exchanged his dress-coat for a shooting-jacket, and with the little wallet in his pocket and his pipe in his mouth, he strode up the road. As he said, he did not feel tired—it was difficult for Stafford, with his athletic frame and perfect muscular system, to get tired under any circumstances—the night was one of the loveliest he had ever seen, and it seemed wicked to waste it by going to bed, so he walked on, all unconsciously going in the direction of Heron Hall. The remarks about his father which had fallen from the bagman, stuck to him for a time like a burr: it isn't pleasant to hear your father described as a kind of charlatan and trickster, and Stafford would have liked to have collared the man and knocked an apology out of him; but there are certain disadvantages attached to the position of gentlemen, and one of them is that you have to pretend to be deaf to speeches that were not intended for your ears; so Stafford could not bash the bagman for having spoken disrespectfully of the great Sir Stephen Orme.
But presently, almost suddenly, Stafford came in sight of the magnificent iron gates, and he forgot his father and the talkative commercial traveller, and his interest in the girl of the dale flashed back upon him with full force. He saw that the gates were chained and locked, and, with a natural curiosity, he followed the road beside the wall. It stopped almost abruptly and gave place to a low railing which divided the lawn in front of the house from the park beyond; and the long irregular facade of the old building was suddenly revealed.
CHAPTER III.
Stafford looked at it with admiration mingled with pity. In the light of the story the landlord had told him he realised the full pathos of its antique grandeur. It was not a ruin by any means: but it was grim with the air of neglect, of desolation, of solitude. In two only, of the many windows, was there any light; there was no sound of life about the vast place; and the moonlight showed up with cruel distinctness the ravages made in stone-work and wood-work by the clawlike hand of Time. A capital of one of the pillars of the still handsome portico had crumbled, several of the pillars were broken and askew; the great door was blistered and cracked by the sun; evidently no paint had touched the place for years. The stone balustrade of the broad terrace had several gaps in it, and the coping and the pillars were lying where they had fallen; the steps of the terrace had grass growing in the interstices of the stones; one of the lions which had flanked the steps had disappeared, and the remaining one was short of a front leg. The grass on the lawn was long and unkempt, the flower beds weedy and straggly, and the flowers themselves growing wild and untrained.
But for the smoke which ascended from two or three of the many chimneys the place might well have seemed deserted and uninhabited, and Stafford with this feeling upon him stood and gazed at the place unrestrainedly. It was difficult for him to realise that only a few hours ago he had left London, that only last night he had dined at his club and gone to the big Merrivale dance; it was as if he were standing in some scene of the middle ages; he would not have been greatly surprised if the grass-grown terrace had suddenly become crowded by old-world forms in patches and powder, hoops and ruffles.
"Good Lord, what would some of the people I know give to belong to—to own this place!" he said to himself. "To think of that girl living alone here with her father!"
He was turning away when he heard a slight sound, the great door opened slowly, and "that girl" came out on to the terrace. She stood for a moment on the great marble door sill, then she crossed the terrace, and leaning on the balustrade, looked dreamily at the moonlit view which lay before her. She could not see Stafford's tall figure, which was concealed by the shadow of one of the trees; and she thought herself alone, as usual. Her solitude did not sadden her, she was accustomed to it; and presently, as if moved by the exquisite beauty of the night, her lips parted and she half sang, half hummed the jewel song from "Faust." She had looked beautiful enough in her old riding-habit and hat, but she seemed a vision of loveliness as she stood in the moonlight with the old house for a background. There was something bewitchingly virginal in the rapt and dreamy face with its dark eyes and long lashes, in the soft, delicately cut lips, the pure ivory pallor; at the same time something equally bewitching in the modernness of her dress, which was of soft cream cashmere, made rather long and in accord with the present fashion; she had placed a rose in the bosom of her dress and it stood out redly, richly from the soft cream. Her hair was no longer rough and touzled by the wind, but brushed in rippling smoothness and coiled in dainty neatness in the nape of her graceful neck. No wonder Stafford caught his breath, held it, as it were, as he gazed at the exquisite picture, which formed so striking a contrast to her surroundings.
She leant her chin on her hand and looked before her as she sung softly; and at that moment her thoughts strayed from the question of what she should do to keep the cows from the lawn, to the young man who had rescued her lamb for her. She did not think of him with anything like interest or curiosity, but she was recalling the ludicrous picture he made as he struggled to the bank with the