* * * * * 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
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.