Nell, of Shorne Mills Part 23

It was a fine night; and he walked to the Northgates' in Grosvenor Square; and thought of the evening he and Nell had sailed in to Shorne Mills with the lights peeping out through the trees, and the stars twinkling in the deep-blue sky. It already seemed years since that night, but he saw the girl's face as clearly as if she were walking beside him now.

The face vanished as he went up the broad staircase and into the brilliantly lighted room; and Shorne Mills seemed farther away, and all that had happened there like a dream, as Lady Northgate held out her hand and smiled at him.

She was an old friend, and many years his senior; but of course she looked young--no one in society gets old nowadays--and she greeted him with a cheerful badinage, which, however skillfully, suggested sympathy.

"It was a good boy to come!" she said. "I scarcely half expected you, and Harry offered to bet me ten to one in my favorite gloves that you wouldn't; but, somehow, I thought you would turn up. I wrote such a pretty note, didn't I?"

"You did; you always do," said Drake. "It was quite irresistible."

Lord Northgate, who was the "Harry" alluded to, came up and gave Drake a warm grip of the hand.

"What the deuce are you doing here?" he asked. "Thought you were shooting down at Monkwell's place, or somewhere. Jolly glad Lucy didn't take my bet. And where have you been?"

"With the Devon and Somerset," replied Drake, with partial truth.

"Wish I had!" grumbled Northgate. "Kept at the Office." He was in the Cabinet. "There's always some beastly row, or little war, just going on when one wants to get at the salmon or the grouse. I declare to goodness that I work like a n.i.g.g.e.r and get nothing but kicks for halfpence! I'd chuck politics to-morrow if it weren't for Lucy; and why on earth she likes to be shut in town, and sweltering in hot rooms, playing this kind of game, I can't imagine."

"But then you haven't a strong imagination, Harry, dear," said his wife pleasantly.

"I've got a strong thirst on me," said Northgate, "and a still stronger desire to cut this show. Come down to the smoking room and have a cigar presently, old chap."

Drake knew that this was equivalent to saying, "I'm sorry for you, old man!" and nodded comprehendingly.

"You're looking very well, Drake," said Lady Northgate, as her husband, struggling with a fearful yawn, sauntered away. "And not at all unhappy."

Drake shrugged his shoulders.

"What's the use? Of course, it's a bad business for me; but all the yowling in the world wouldn't better it. What can't be cured must be endured."

Lady Northgate nodded at him approvingly.

"I knew you'd take it like this," she said. "You won't go down to Harry for a little while?"

"Oh, no," said Drake, with a smile. "I'm going the round; I'm not going to shirk it."

He was one of the most popular men in London, and there were many in the room who really sympathized with and were sorry for him; and Drake, as he exchanged greetings with one and another, felt that the thing hadn't been so bad, after all. He made this consoling reflection as he leaned against the wall beside a chair in which sat a lady whom he did not know, and at whom he had scarcely glanced; and he was roused from his reverie by her saying:

"May I venture to trouble you to put this gla.s.s down?"

He took the gla.s.s and set it on the pedestal of the statuette beside him, and, as in duty bound, returned to the lady. She was an extremely pretty little woman, with soft brown hair and extremely bright eyes, which, notwithstanding their brightness, were not at all hard. He felt, rather than knew, that she was perfectly dressed, and he noticed that she wore remarkably fine diamonds. They sparkled and glittered in her hair, on her bosom, on her wrists, and on her fingers.

He had never seen her before, and he wondered who she was.

"You have just come up from the country?" she said.

The accent with which she made this rather startling remark betrayed her nationality to Drake. The American accent, when it is voiced by a person of culture and refinement, is an extremely pretty one; the slight drawl is musical, and the emphasis which is given to words not usually made emphatic, is attractive.

"Yes," said Drake. "But how did you know that?"

"Your face and hands are so brown," she replied, with a frankness which was robbed of all offense by her placidity and unself-consciousness.

"Nearly all the men one meets here are so colorless. I suppose it is because you have so little air and sun in London. At first, one is afraid that everybody is ill; but after a time one gets used to it."

Drake was amused and a little interested.

"Have the men in America so much color?" he asked.

"Well, how did you know I was an American?" she inquired, with a charming little air of surprise. "I suppose my speech betrayed me? That is so annoying. I thought I had almost entirely lost my accent."

"I don't know why you should want to lose it," said Drake, honestly enough. "It's five hundred times better than our London one!"

"I didn't say I wanted to exchange it for that," she remarked.

"Don't exchange it for any other, if I may be permitted to say so."

"That's very good of you," she said; "but isn't it rather like asking the leopard not to change his spots? And after all, I don't know why we shouldn't be as proud of our accent as you are of yours."

"I'm quite certain I'm not proud of mine," said Drake.

She smiled up at him over her fan; a small and costly painted affair, with diamonds incrusted in the handle.

"You are more modest than most Englishmen," she said.

"I don't know whether to be grateful or not for that," remarked Drake.

"Are we all so conceited?"

"Well, I think you are all pretty well satisfied with yourselves," she replied. "I never knew any nation so firmly convinced that it was the pick of creation; and I expect before I am here very long I shall become as fully convinced as you are that the world was made by special contract for the use and amus.e.m.e.nt of the English. Mind, I won't say that it could have been made for a better people."

"That's rather severe," said Drake. "But don't you forget that you were English yourself a few years ago; that, in a sense, you are English still."

"That's very nicely said," she remarked; "more especially as I didn't quite deserve it. I was wanting to see whether I could make you angry."

Drake stared at her with astonishment.

"Why on earth should you want to make me angry?" he asked.

"Well, I've heard a great deal about you," she replied. "And all the people who talked about you told me that you were rather hot-tempered.

Lady Northgate, for instance, a.s.sured me you could be a perfect bear when you liked."

Drake smiled.

"That was extremely kind of Lady Northgate."

"Well, so long as it wasn't true. I've heard so much about you that I was quite anxious to see you. I am speaking to Lord Drake Selbie, am I not?"

"That's my name," said Drake.

"The nephew of Angleford?"

Drake nodded.