Nell of Shorne Mills

Nell's face flamed; then, ashamed of the uncalled-for blush, she

laughed.

"Sir Archie Walbrooke gave it me," she said.

The earl looked at her with surprise, which gradually changed to a keen

scrutiny, under which Nell felt her blush rising again. But she said

nothing, and, after a moment during which he seemed to be considering

deeply, he passed on, his hands clasped behind his tall figure, his head

bent.

Immediately the last guest had gone, Lady Wolfer went to her own

apartments. Nell stood in the center of the vast and now empty room, and

looked round her absently, and with that sense of some pending calamity

which we call presentiment.

Innocent of the world and its intrigues, as she was, she could not fail

to have seen that neither the earl nor the countess was happy; and that

the endless work and excitement in which they endeavored to absorb

themselves only left them dissatisfied and wretched.

She liked them both; indeed, she had grown very fond of Lady Wolfer, and

her heart ached for the woman who had striven to hide her unhappiness

behind the mask of a forced gayety and recklessness. For a moment, a

single moment, as she caught sight of the flower, a vague suspicion of

the danger which threatened the countess arose in Nell's mind; but she

put the suspicion from her with a shudder, for it was too dreadful to be

entertained.

Sometimes she went to Lady Wolfer's room after she had retired, and,

remembering the earl's message, she went now upstairs and knocked at the

countess' door.

A low voice bade her come in, and Nell entered and found Lady Wolfer

sitting on a low chair before the fire. She was alone, and the figure

crouching before the blaze, as if she were cold, aroused Nell's pity.

She crossed the room and bent over her.

"Are you ill, dear, or only tired?" she asked gently.

Lady Wolfer started and looked up at her, and Nell saw that her face was

white and drawn.

"Is it you?" she said. "I thought it was Wardell"--Wardell was her maid.

"Yes, I am tired."

"Lord Wolfer has asked me to beg you not to go out to-night. He saw that

you looked tired," she said.

Lady Wolfer gazed in the fire, and her lips curled sarcastically.

"He is very considerate," she said. "Extraordinarily so! One would think

he cared whether I was tired or not, wouldn't one, eh, dear?"

"Why do you say that, and so bitterly?" Nell said, in a low voice. "Of

course he cares. He is always kind and thoughtful."