er 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.

"Forgive me!" he said. "You are angry because I called you--Ida! It was
wrong and presumptuous; but I have learned to think of you by your
name--and it slipped out. Are you very angry? Ah, you knew why I called
you so? Don't you know that--I love you!"

She raised her eyes for a moment but did not look at him; they were
fixed dreamily on the great hills in the distance, then drooped again,
and her brows came together, her lips straightened with a still more
marked expression of trouble, doubt, and wonder.

"I love you," he said, with the deep note of a man's passion in his
voice. "I didn't mean to tell you, to speak--I didn't know until just
now how it was with me: you see I am telling you everything, the whole
truth! You will listen to me?"

For she had made a movement of turning away, a slow, heavy gesture as
if she were encumbered by chains, as if she were under some spell from
which she could not wake.

"I will tell you everything, at the risk of making you angry, at the
risk of your--sending me away."

He paused for a moment, as if he were choosing his words with a care
that sprang from his fear lest he should indeed rouse her anger
and--lose her.

"The first day I saw you--you remember?"

As if she could forget! She knew as he asked the question that no
trifling detail of that first meeting was forgotten, that every word
was engraven on her memory.

"When I saw you riding dow