Sometimes he would row across the lake and they would walk side by side along the bank, and screened by the trees in which the linnet and the thrush sang the songs which make a lover's litany; at others--and these were the sweetest meeting of all, for they came in the soft and stilly night when all nature was hushed as if under the spell of the one great passion--he would ride or walk over after dinner, and they would sit in the ruined archway of the old chapel and talk of their blank past, the magic present, and the future which was to hold nothing but happiness.
Love grows fast under such conditions, and the love of these two mortals grew to gigantic proportions, absorbing the lives of both of them.

To Stafford, all the hours that were not spent with this girl of his heart were so much dreary waste.
To Ida--ah, well, who shall measure the intensity of a girl's first passion?
She only lived in the expectation of seeing him, in his presence and the whispered words and caresses of his love; and, in his absence, in the memory of them.

For her life meant just this man who had come and taken the heart from her bosom and enthroned his own in its place.
They told each other everything.

Stafford knew the whole of her life before they met, all the little details of the daily routine of the Hall, and her management of the farm; and she learnt from him all that was going on at the great, splendid palace which in his modesty Sir Stephen Orme had called the Villa.

She liked to nestle against him and hear the small details of his life, as he liked to hear hers; and she seemed to know all the visitors at the Villa, and their peculiarities, as well as if she were personally acquainted with them.
"You ought not to leave them so much, Stafford." she said, with mock reproof, as they sat one afternoon in the ballow by the river.