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.
"Thanks! Drive on, coachman," said the man; and he drew in his head with a grim smile, and something like a sneer on his thick lips that made Stafford's eyes flash..