Nell of Shorne Mills

Lady Lucille heaved a long sigh.

"How foolish of you!" she murmured. "As if it mattered."

Drake filled his pipe again, and smiled cynically over the match as he

lit it.

"That's your view of it?" he said. "I suppose--yes, I suppose you think

I've been a fool. I dare say you're right; but, unfortunately for me, I

couldn't look at it in that way. I stuck to my colors--that's a

highfalutin way of putting it--and I've got to pay the penalty. My

uncle's married, and, likely enough--in fact, in all probability--his

wife will present the world with a young Lord Angleford."

"She's quite a young woman," murmured Lucille, with the wisdom of her

kind.

"Just so," said Drake. "So I am in rather a hole. I always looked

forward to inheriting Anglemere and the estate and my uncle's money. But

all that is altered. He may have an heir who will very properly inherit

all that I thought was to be mine. I wrote and told you of this, though

it wasn't necessary; but I deemed it right to you to place the whole

matter before you, Lucille. I've no doubt that the society papers have

saved me the trouble, and helped you thoroughly to realize that the man

to whom you were engaged was no longer the heir to the earldom of

Angleford and Lord Angleford's money, but merely Drake Selbie, a mere

nobody, and plunged up to his neck in debts and difficulties."

She was silent, and he went on: "See here, Luce, I asked you to marry me because I loved you. You are

the most beautiful woman I have ever met. I fell in love with you the

first time I saw you--at that dance of the Horn-Wallises. Do you

remember? I wanted you to be my wife; I wanted you more than I ever

wanted anything else in my life. Do you not remember the day I proposed

to you, there under Taplow Wood, at that picnic where we all got wet and

miserable? And you said 'Yes'; and my uncle was pleased. But all is

changed now; I am just Drake Selbie, with very little or no income, and

a mountain of debts; with no prospects of becoming Lord Angleford and

owner of the Angleford money and lands. And I want to know how this

change--strikes you; what you mean, to do?"

She glanced up at him sideways.

"You--you haven't got my letters?" she said.

He shook his head.

"I'm--I'm sorry," she said. "It isn't my fault. Father--you know what he

would say. He may be right. He said that--that you were ruined; that our

marriage would be quite impossible; that--that our engagement must be

broken off. Really, Drake, it is not my fault. You know how poor we are;

that--that a rich marriage is an absolute necessity for me. Father is up

to his neck in debt, too, and we scarcely seem to have a penny of ready

money; it's nothing but duns, and duns, and duns, every day in the week;

why, even now, we've had to bolt from London because I can't pay my

milliner's bill. It's simply impossible for me to marry a poor man. I

should only be a drag upon him; and father--well, father would be a drag

upon him, too; you know what father is. And--and so, Drake, I wrote and

told you that--that our engagement must be considered broken off and at

an end."