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."