"I'll get the _Fashion Gazette_ if Mrs. Porter has it, mamma. I won't be
long, and Molly will hear you if you want her before the time."
Mrs. Lorton sighed deeply in acknowledgment, and Nell left the room.
She had been bright and girlish enough while romping with her brother,
but the scene with her stepmother had left its impression on her face;
the dark-gray eyes were rather sad and weary; there was a slight droop
at the corners of the sweetly curved lips; but the change lent an
indescribable charm to the girlish face. Looking at it, as it was then,
no man but would have longed to draw the slim, graceful figure toward
him, to close the wistful eyes with a kiss, to caress the soft hair with
a comforting hand. There was a subtle fascination in the very droop of
the lips which would have haunted an artist or a poet, and driven the
ordinary man wild with love.
Mrs. Lorton had called Shorne Mills a "hole," but as a matter of fact,
the village stood almost upon the brow of the hill down which ran the
very steep road to the tiny harbor and fishing place which nestled under
the red Devon cliffs; and barbaric as the place might be, it was
beautiful beyond words. No spot in this loveliest of all counties was
more lovely; and as yet it was, so to speak, undiscovered. With the
exception of the vicarage there was no other house, worthy the name, in
the coombe; all the rest were fishermen's cots. The nearest inn and
shops were on the fringe of the moor behind and beyond the Lorton's
cottage; the nearest house of any consequence was that of the local
squire, three miles away. The market town of Shallop was eight miles
distant, and the only public communication with it was the carrier's
cart, which went to and fro twice weekly. In short, Shorne Mills was out
of the world, and will remain so until the Railway Fiend flaps his
coal-black wings over it and drops, with red-hot feet, upon it to sear
its beauty and destroy its solitude. It had got its name from a flour
and timber mill which had once flourished halfway down the coombe or
valley; but the wheels were now silent, the mills were falling to
pieces, and the silver stream served no more prosaic purpose than
supplying the fishing folk with crystal water which was pure as the
stars it reflected. This stream, as it ran beside the road or meandered
through the sloping meadows, made soft music, day and night, all through
the summer, but swelled itself into a torrent in the winter, and roared
as it swept over the smooth bowlders to its bridegroom, the sea;
sometimes it was the only sound in the valley, save always the murmur of
the ocean, and the shrill weird cry of the curlew as it flew from the
sea marge to the wooded heights above.