Nell of Shorne Mills

The girl who, with changing color, stood gazing at Lord Drake Selbie

might have stepped out of one of Marcus Stone's pictures. She was as

fair as a piece of biscuit china. Her hair was golden, and, strange to

say in these latter days, naturally so. It was, indeed, like the fleece

of gold itself under her fashionable yachting hat. Her eyes, widely

opened, with that curious look of surprise and fear, were hazel--a deep

hazel, which men, until they knew her, accepted as an indication of Lady

Lucille's depth of feeling. She was slightly built, but graceful, with

the grace of the fashionable modiste.

She was the product of the marriage of Art and Fashion of this

fin-de-siècle age. Other ages have given us wit, beauty allied with

esprit, dignity of demeanor, and a nobility of principle; this end of

the nineteenth century has bestowed upon us--Lady Lucille Turfleigh.

It is in its way a marvelous product. It is very beautiful, with the

delicate beauty of excessive culture and effete luxury. It has the

subtle charm of the exotic, of the tall and graceful arum, whose

spotless whiteness cannot bear a single breath of the keen east wind.

It is charming, bewitching; it looks all purity and spirituality; it

seems to breathe poetry and a Higher Culture. It goes through life like

a rose leaf floating upon a placid stream. It is precious to look at,

pleasant to live with, and it has only one defect--it has no heart.

We have cast off the old creeds like so many shackles; we are so finely

educated, so cultivated, that we have learned to do more than laugh at

sentiment; we regard it with a contemptuous pity.

There is only one thing which we value, and that is Pleasure. Some

persons labor under the mistaken notion that Money is the universal

quest; but it is not so. The Golden God is set up in every market place,

it stands at every street corner; but it is not for himself that the

crowd worship at the feet of the brazen image, but because he can buy so

much.

It is Money which nowadays holds the magician's rod. With a wave he can

give us rank, luxury, power, place, influence, and beauty. This is the

creed, the religion, which we teach our children, which is continually

in our hearts if not on our lips; and it is the creed, the religion, in

which Lady Lucille was reared.

Her history is a public one. It is the story of how many fashionable

women? Her father, Lord Turfleigh, was an Irish peer. He had inherited a

historic title, and thousands of acres which he had scarcely seen, but

which he had helped to incumber. All the Turfleighs from time immemorial

had been fast and reckless, but this Turfleigh had outpaced them all,

and had easily romped in first in the race of dissipation. As a young

man his name had been synonymous with every kind of picturesque

profligacy. Every pound he could screw out of the land, or obtain at

ruinous interest from the Jews, had been spent in what he and his kind

call pleasure.