earl. Would you like to see the
stables? If so, I will call the head coachman----"

But they had seen enough for one day, and, almost in silence, walked
back to the lodge.

"I wonder whether Lord Angleford knows, realizes, how big a man he is?"
said Dick, as he smoked his last pipe that night in the sitting room of
the lodge. "We've seen the house, but we haven't seen the park or the
estates or the farms, which extend for miles around. Fancy owning all
this, and a title, a name, which every boy and girl learns about when
they read their English history!"

"I decline to fancy to realize anything more," said Nell, with a laugh.
"That old woman's voice rings in my ears, and I feel as if I were
intoxicated with, overwhelmed by, the grandeur of the Anglefords. I am
going to bed now, Dick. To bed in a house in the country, with the scent
of the flowers stealing in at the windows! Oh, think of it! and think
of--Beaumont Buildings! Dick, would it be possible to obtain the post of
lodgekeeper to Anglemere House? I envy the meanest laborer on the
estate. Next to being the earl himself, I think I would like to be
keeper of one of the lodges, or--or chief of the laundry!"

She went up to her room--a room in which the ceiling was "covered" to
the shape of the thatched roof.

She was brushing the long tresses of soft, fluffy black hair which
Drake had loved to kiss, when she heard the sound of a horse trotting up
the avenue.

She went to the window, and, screened by the curtain, looked out. A full
moon was shining and flooding the avenue With light.

She waited, looking out absently. The sound came nearer, and suddenly
the horseman came in sight. Holding the muslin curtain for a screen, she
still waited and watched for him. Then, with a faint cry--a cry almost
of terror--she shrank back.

For the man who was riding up the avenue to Anglemere was strangely like
Drake!

He had passed in an instant; his head was bowed, his face only for a
moment in the moonlight, and yet--and yet! Was she dreaming--was fancy
only trifling with her--or was it indeed and in truth Drake himself?

CHAPTER XXVII.

Nell lay awake for hours, dwelling on the appearance of the horseman who
had ridden by in the moonlight.

It seemed to her that it was impossible that she, of all persons in the
world, could be mistaken; and yet how could Drake be here, and why
should he be riding up the avenue of Anglemere at this time of night?

The sigh