* * * * * No pen, however eloquent, can describe the weariness of the hours for

Nell which had passed since "Mr. Drake Vernon" had left Shorne Mills.

Something had seemed to have gone out of her life. The sun was shining

as brightly, there was the same light on the sea, the same incoming and

outgoing tide; every one was as kind to her as they had been before he

left, and yet all life seemed a blank. When she was not waiting upon

mamma she wandered about Shorne Mills, sailed in the _Annie Laurie_, and

sometimes rode across the moor. But there was something wanting, and the

lack of it made happiness impossible. She thought of him all day, and at

night she tossed in her little bed sleeplessly, recalling the happy

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hours she had spent with him. God knows she tried hard to forget him, to

be just the same, to feel just the same, as she had been before he had

been thrown at her feet. But she could not. He had entered into her life

and become a principal part of it, absorbed it. She found herself

thinking of him all through the day. She grew thin and pale in an

incredibly short time. Even Dick himself could not rouse her; and Mrs.

Lorton read her a severe lecture upon the apathy of indolence.

Life had been so joyous and so all-sufficing a thing for her; but now

nothing seemed to interest her. There was a dull, aching pain in her

heart which she could not understand, and which she could not get rid

of. She longed for solitude. She often walked up to the top of the hill,

to the purple moor over which she had ridden with Drake Vernon; and

there she would sit, recalling every word she had said, every tone of

his voice. She tried to forget him, but it was impossible.

One evening she walked up the hill slowly and thoughtfully, and seated

herself on a mossy bank, and gave herself up to that reverie in which we

dream dreams which are more of heaven than of earth.

Suddenly she heard the sound of footsteps. She looked up listlessly and

with a slight feeling of impatience, seeing that her reverie was

disturbed.

The footsteps came nearer, a tall figure appeared against the sunset.

She rose to her feet, trembling and filled with the hope that seemed to

her too wild for hope.

In another moment he was beside her. She rose, quivering in every nerve.

Was it only a dream, or was it he? He held her hand and looked down at

her with an expression in his eyes and face which made her tremble, and

yet which made her heart leap.




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