, he liked her very
much--so much that he shrank from telling her about this quarrel with
his uncle; and he knew that if he went to her she would get it out of
him.

He walked home, feeling very miserable and down on his luck. How he
hated London, and all that belonged to it! Like a whiff of fresh air the
memory of Shorne Mills wafted across his mind. He let himself in with
his latchkey, and, taking a sheet of note paper, made some calculations
upon it. There was still something remaining of his mother's fortune to
him. If he were not Lord Drake Selbie, but simply Mr. Drake Vernon, he
could manage to live upon it. The vision of a slim and graceful girl,
with soft black hair and violet-gray eyes, rose before him. It seemed to
beckon him, to beckon him away from the hollow, heartless world in which
he had hitherto lived. He rose and flung open wide the window of his
sitting room, and the breath of air which came through the London
streets seemed fragrant with the air which wafted over Shorne Mills.

* * * * *

No pen, however eloquent, can describe the weariness of the hours for
Nell which had passed since "Mr. Drake Vernon" had left Shorne Mills.
Something had seemed to have gone out of her life. The sun was shining
as brightly, there was the same light on the sea, the same incoming and
outgoing tide; every one was as kind to her as they had been before he
left, and yet all life seemed a blank. When she was not waiting upon
mamma she wandered about Shorne Mills, sailed in the _Annie Laurie_, and
sometimes rode across the moor. But there was something wanting, and the
lack of it made happiness impossible. She thought of him all day, and at
night she tossed in her little bed sleeplessly, recalling the happy
hours she had spent with him. God knows she tried hard to forget him, to
be just the same, to feel just the same, as she had been before he had
been thrown at her feet. But she could not. He had entered into her life
and become a principal part of it, absorbed it. She found herself
thinking of him all through the day. She grew thin and pale in an
incredibly short time. Even Dick himself could not rouse her; and Mrs.
Lorton read her a severe lecture upon the apathy of indolence.

Life had been so joyous and so all-sufficing a thing for her; but now
nothing seemed to interest her. There was a dull, aching pain in her
heart which she could not understand, and which she could not get rid
o