Nell of Shorne Mills

He had married for money, had got it, and had spent it, even before his

patient and long-suffering wife had expiated the mistake of her life in

the only possible way. She had left Lady Lucille behind, and the girl

had matriculated and taken honors in her father's school.

To Lady Lucille there was only one thing in life worth having--money;

and to obtain this prize she had been carefully nurtured and laboriously

taught. Long before she left the nursery she had grown to understand

that her one object and sole ambition must be a wealthy and suitable

marriage; and to this end every advantage of mind and body had been

trained and cultivated as one trains a young thoroughbred for a great

race.

She had been taught to laugh at sentiment, to regard admiration as

valueless unless it came from a millionaire; to sneer at love unless it

paced, richly clad and warmly shod, from a palace. She had graduated in

the School of Fashion, and had passed with high honors. There was no

more beautiful woman in all England than Lady Lucille; few possessed

greater charm; men sang her praises; artists fought for the honor of

hanging her picture in the Academy; the society papers humbly reported

her doings, her sayings, and her conquests; royalties smiled approvingly

on this queen of fashion, and not a single soul, Lady Lucille herself

least of all, realized that this perfection was but the hollow husk and

shell of beauty without heart or soul; that behind the lovely face,

within the graceful form, lurked as selfish and ignoble a nature as that

which stirs the blood of any drab upon the Streets.

"Drake!" she said. "Why! I'd no idea! What are you doing here?"

He motioned her to a seat with a wave of his pipe, and she sank down on

the stone slab, after a careful glance at it, and eyed him curiously but

with still a trace of her first embarrassment.

She looked a perfect picture, as she sat there, with the steep,

descending wall, the red Devon cliffs, the blue, glittering sea for her

background; a picture which might have been presented with a summer

number of one of the illustrated weeklies; and all as unreal and as

unlike life as they are. It is true that she wore a yachting costume

exquisitely made and perfectly fitting; and Drake, as he looked at it,

acknowledged its claims upon his admiration, but he knew it was all a

sham, and, half unconsciously, he compared it with the old worn skirt

and the serviceable jersey worn by Nell, who had gone up the hill--how

long ago was it? Nell's face and hands were brown with the kiss of

God's sun; Lady Lucille's face was like a piece of delicate Sèvres, and

her hands were incased in white kid gauntlets. To him, at that moment,

she looked like an actress playing in a nautical burlesque at the

Gaiety; and, for the first time since he had known her, he found himself

looking at her critically, and, notwithstanding her faultless

attire--faultless from a fashionable point of view--with disapproval.