The earl muttered something that sounded like "good night," and Drake left the house. He ought to have said good night to Lady Angleford, but he shirked it. He bore her no animosity; indeed, 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 of. She longed for solitude. She often walked up to the top of the hill, to the purple moor over which she had ridden with Drake Vernon; and there she would sit, recalling every word she had said, every tone of his voice. She tried to forget him, but it was impossible.
One evening she walked up the hill slowly and thoughtfully, and seated herself on a mossy bank, and gave herself up to that reverie in which we dream dreams which are more of heaven than of earth.
Suddenly she heard the sound of footsteps. She looked up listlessly and with a slight feeling of impatience, seeing that her reverie was disturbed.
The footsteps came nearer, a tall figure appeared against the sunset. She rose to her feet, trembling and filled with the hope that seemed to her too wild for hope.
In another moment he was beside her. She rose, quivering in every nerve.
Was it only a dream, or was it he? He held her hand and looked down at her with an expression in his eyes and face which made her tremble, and yet which made her heart leap.