Nell of Shorne Mills

He turned on his elbow and gazed at the jetty and the cottages which

straggled up from it in the narrow ravine to the heights above, to the

unique and quaint village upon which the still hot sun was shining as

the boat danced toward it.

"No. I shan't find it difficult to remember--or regret."

He stifled a sigh. A sigh rose to her lips also, but she checked it, and

forced a smile.

"One does not break one's arm every day, and it is not easy to forget

that," she said; "and yet, I dare say you will remember Shorne Mills. I

don't think you will see many prettier places. Isn't it quite lovely

this evening, with the sun shining on the cliffs and making old

Brownie's windows glitter--like--like the diamonds in mamma's bracelet?"

She laughed with a girlish mischievousness, and ran on rapidly, as if

she must talk, as if a pause were to be averted as a peril.

"I've heard people say that there is only one other place in the world

like it--Cintra, in Portugal, isn't it?"

He nodded. He was gazing at the picturesque little place, the human

nests stuck like white stones in the cleft of the cliffs; and something

more than the beauty of Shorne Mills was stirring, almost oppressing,

his heart. He had stayed at, and departed from, many a place as

beautiful in other ways as this, and had left it with some little

regret, perhaps, but never with the dull, aching feeling such as weighed

upon him this evening.

"And at night it's lovelier still," went on Nell cheerfully, after a

snatch of song, just sung under her breath, to show how happy and free

from care she was at that moment. "To sail in on the tide of an autumn

evening when the lights have been lit, and every cottage looks like a

lantern; and the blue haze hangs over the village, and the children's

voices come floating over the water as if through a mist; then, on

nights like that, the sea is all phosphorescent, and the boat leaves a

line of silvery light in its wake; and one seems to have all the world

to oneself----"

She stopped suddenly and sighed unconsciously. Was she thinking that,

when that autumn night came, and Drake Vernon was not with her, she

would indeed have all the world to herself, and that all the world is

all the nicer when one has a companion? He lowered his eyes to her face.

"That was a pretty picture," he said, in a low voice. "I shall think of

that--wherever I may be in the autumn."