"Does she not?" she said easily. "She knows as much about you as I do, and I am content. But mamma will be pleased, because she likes you. And Dick"—she laughed, and her eyes glowed with her love for the boy—"Dick will yell, and will tease me out of my life. But he will be glad, because he is so very fond of you. What do you do to make everybody like you so much, Mr. Vernon?"
"Oh, 'Drake, Drake, Drake'!" he said.
"Drake," she murmured, and he stifled the word on her lips with kisses.
"I'm by no means sure that Mrs. Lorton will be pleased," he said, after a moment. "See here, Nell—I never saw such hair as yours. It is dark, almost black, and yet it is soft and like silk——"
"And it is all coming down. Ah, no, you cannot coil it up. Let it be for a moment. Do you really like it? Dick says it is like a horse's mane."
"Dick is a rude young scamp to whom I shall have to teach respect for his sister. But Mrs. Lorton, dearest—I'm afraid she won't be pleased. I ought to have told you, Nell, that I'm a poor man."
She nestled a little closer, and scooped up the sand with her disengaged hand—the one he was not holding—and she spoke with an indifference which filled Drake to the brim with satisfaction.
"Yes," he said. "I was not always so poor; but I am one who has had losses, as Shakespeare puts it."
"I am sorry," she said simply, but still with a kind of indifference. "Mamma said you must be rich because you—well, persons who are poor don't keep three horses and give diamond bracelets for presents."