"Thanks," said Mr. Vernon gravely. "I've no doubt I shall enjoy it." But he took up one of Nell's books and absently looked at her name written on the flyleaf—"Eleanor Lorton." The first name struck him as stiff and ill-suited to the slim and graceful girl whose face he only dimly remembered; "Nell" was better.
CHAPTER IV.
He took up one of the books and read a page or two; but the simple story could not hold him, and he dropped the volume, and, leaning his head on his sound arm, stared listlessly at the old-fashioned wall paper. But he did not see the pattern; the panorama of his own life's story was passing before him, and it was not at all a pleasing panorama. A life of pleasure, of absolute uselessness, of unthinking selfishness. What a dreary pilgrimage it seemed to him, as he lay in the little bedroom, with the scent of Nell's flowers floating up to him from the garden beneath, with the sound of the sea, flinging itself against the cliffs, burring like a giant bumble bee in his ears. If any one had asked him whether his life had been worth living, he would have answered with a decided negative; and yet he was young, the gods had been exceeding good to him in many ways, almost every way, and there was no great sorrow to cast its shadow over him.
"Pity I didn't break my neck," he muttered. "No one would have cared—unless it were Luce, and perhaps even she, now——"
He broke off the reverie with a short laugh that was more bitter than a sigh, and turned his face to the wall.
Doctor Spence, when he paid his visit later in the day, found him thus, and eyed him curiously.
"Arm's getting on all right, Mr. Vernon," he said; "but the rest of you isn't improving. I think you'd better get up to-morrow and go downstairs. I'd keep you here, of course; but lying in bed isn't a bracing operation, especially when you think; and you think, don't you?"
"When I can't help it," replied Vernon, rather grimly. "I'm glad you have given me permission to get up; though I dare say I should have got up without it."
"I dare say," commented the old doctor. "Always have your own way, as a rule, don't you?"