eeze made music in the leaves, the linnet sang his heart
out above their heads, the soft air breathed an atmosphere of love, and
these two mortals were, after months of misery, happy beyond the power
of words to express.

And as they sat, hand in hand, talking of the past, and picturing the
future, neither of them naturally enough gave a thought to Lady Luce.

And yet he had asked her to come back to Anglemere; and without doubt
she would come.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

It was an enchanted world to these two. For some time they sat side by
side, or, rather, Drake sat at Nell's feet, her hand sometimes resting,
lightly as a dove's wing, with a caress in its touch, upon his head.
There were long spells of silence, for such joy as theirs is shy of
words; but now and again they talked.

They had so much to tell each other, and each was greedy of even the
smallest detail. Drake wanted to hear of all that had happened to her
since the terrible parting on the night of the Maltbys' ball--how long
ago it seemed to them as they sat there in the sunshine that flickered
through the leaves and touched Nell's hair with flashes of light.

And Nell told him everything--everything excepting the episode of Lady
Wolfer and Sir Archie--that was not hers to tell, but Lady Wolfer's
secret, and Nell meant to carry it to the grave with her; not even to
this dearly loved lover of hers could she breathe a word of that crisis
in Ada Wolfer's life. And yet, if she had been free to tell him about it
then and there, how much better it would have been for them both, how
much difference it would have made in their lives!

"And was there no one, no other man whom you saw, who could teach you to
forget me, Nell?" he asked, half fearfully.

Nell blushed and shook her head.

"Surely there was some one among all you knew who was not quite blind,
who was sensible enough to fall in love with the loveliest and the
sweetest girl in all London?"

Nell's blush grew warmer as she remembered some of the men who had paid
court to her, who would have been her suitors if she had not kept them
at arm's length.

"There was no one," she said simply.

"Falconer?" he said, in a low voice.

The color slowly ebbed from her face, and her eyes grew rather sad as she
reflected that her happiness had been purchased at the cost of his pain
and self-sacrifice.

"Yes," she said, in a whisper, for she could not hide the truth from
him; her heart was bare to his ga