Drake replied in the affirmative, had a bath, and changed, and sat down to one of the daintily prepared dinners which were the envy and despair of his bachelor friends. It was really an admirable little dinner; the claret was a famous one from the Anglemere cellars, and warmed to a nicety; the coffee was perfection; Sparling's ministrations left nothing to be desired; and yet Drake sank into his easy-chair after the meal with a sigh that was weary and wistful.
There had never been anything more than soup and a plain joint, with a pudding to follow, at the dinners at The Cottage; but the simple meal had been rendered a pleasant one by Dick's cheerful and boyish nonsense; and whenever Drake looked across the table, there had been Nell's sweet face opposite him, sometimes grave with a pensive thoughtfulness, at others all alight with merriment and innocent, girlish gayety.
His room to-night seemed very dull and lonely. It was strange; he had never been bored by his own society before; he had rather liked to dine alone, to smoke his cigarette with the evening paper across his knee or a book on the table beside him. He tried to read; but the carefully edited paper, with its brilliant articles, its catchy little paragraphs, and its sparkling gossip, didn't interest him in the least. He dropped it, and fell to wondering, to picturing, what they were doing at that precise moment at The Cottage. Mrs. Lorton, no doubt, was sitting in her high-backed chair reading the Fashion Gazette; Dick was lounging just outside the window, smoking a cigarette, mending his rod, and whistling the last comic song. And Nell—what was Nell doing? Perhaps she was playing softly one of the pieces he had grown fond of; or leaning half out of the window squabbling affectionately with the boy.
Or perhaps they were talking of him—Drake. Did they miss him? At the thought, he was reminded of the absurd song—"Will They Miss Me When I'm Gone?" And, with something like a blush for his sentimental weakness, as he mentally termed it, he sprang up and took his letters. They consisted mostly of bills and invitations. He chucked the first aside and glanced at the others; both were distasteful to him. He felt as if he should like to cut the world forever.
And yet that wouldn't do. Everybody would say that he was completely knocked over by the ruin of his prospects, and that he had run away. He couldn't stand that. He had always been accustomed to facing the music, however unpleasant it might be; and he would face it now. Besides, it would never do to sit there moping, and wishing himself back at Shorne Mills; because that was just what he was doing.
He turned over the gilt-edged cards and the scented notes—there seemed to be a great many people in town, notwithstanding the deadness of the season—and he selected one from a certain Lady Northgate. She was an old friend of his, and she had written him a pretty little note, asking him to a reception for that night. It was just the little note which a thorough woman of the world would write to a man whom she liked, and who had struck a streak of bad luck. Most of Drake's acquaintances who were in town would be there; and it would be a good opportunity of facing the situation and accepting more or less sincere sympathy with a good grace.
It was a fine night; and he walked to the Northgates' in Grosvenor Square; and thought of the evening he and Nell had sailed in to Shorne Mills with the lights peeping out through the trees, and the stars twinkling in the deep-blue sky. It already seemed years since that night, but he saw the girl's face as clearly as if she were walking beside him now.
The face vanished as he went up the broad staircase and into the brilliantly lighted room; and Shorne Mills seemed farther away, and all that had happened there like a dream, as Lady Northgate held out her hand and smiled at him.
She was an old friend, and many years his senior; but of course she looked young—no one in society gets old nowadays—and she greeted him with a cheerful badinage, which, however skillfully, suggested sympathy.
"It was a good boy to come!" she said. "I scarcely half expected you, and Harry offered to bet me ten to one in my favorite gloves that you wouldn't; but, somehow, I thought you would turn up. I wrote such a pretty note, didn't I?"