"If it is so unlucky, why do you go? But why is it so unlucky?" she asked; and still her tone sounded indifferent.
"It's bad luck because—well, because I have been very happy here," he said, checking his horse into a walk.
She glanced at him as she paced beside him.
"You have been so happy here? Really? That sounds so strange. It is such a dull, quiet place."
"Perhaps it's because of that," he said. "God knows, I'm not anxious to get back to London—the world."
She looked at him thoughtfully with her clear, girlish eyes; and he met the glance, then looked across the moor with something like a frown.
"There is a fascination in the place," he said. "It is so beautiful and so quiet; and—and—London is so noisy, such a blare. And——"
He paused.
She kept the high-bred mare to a walk.
"But will you not be glad to go?" she asked. "It must be dull here, as I said. You must have so many friends who—who will be glad to see you, and whom you will be glad to see."
He smiled cynically.
"Friends!" he said grimly. "Has any one many friends? And how many of the people I know will, I wonder, be glad to see me? They will find it pleasant to pity me."
"Pity you! Why?" she asked, her beautiful eyes turned on him with surprise.
Drake bit his lip.
"Well, I've had a piece of bad luck lately," he said.
"Oh, I'm sorry!" murmured Nell.
He laughed grimly.
"Oh, it's no more than I had a right to expect. Don't forget what I told you about holding your reins—that's right."
"Is it about money?" she asked timidly. "I always think bad luck means that."
He nodded.
"Yes; I've lost a great deal of money lately," he replied vaguely. "And—and I must leave Shorne Mills."
"I am sorry," she said simply, and without attempting to conceal her regret. "I—we—have almost grown to think that you belonged here. Will you be sorry to go?"
He glanced at her innocent eyes and frowned.
"Yes; very much," he replied. "There is a fascination in this place. It is so quiet, so beautiful, so remote, so far away from the world which I hate!"
"You hate? Why do you hate it?" she asked.
He bit his lip again.
"Because it is false and hollow," he replied. "No man—or woman—thinks what he or she says, or says what he or she thinks."
"Then why go back to it?" she asked. "But all the people in London can't be—bad and false," she added, as if she were considering his sweeping condemnation.
"Oh, not all," he said. "I've been unfortunate in my acquaintances, perhaps, as Voltaire said."
He looked across the moor again absently. Her question, "Then why go back to it?" haunted him. It was absurd to imagine that he could remain at Shorne Mills. The quiet life had been pleasant, he had felt better in health here than he had done for years; but—well, a man who has spent so many years in the midst of the whirl of life is very much like the old prisoner of the Bastille who, when he was released by the revolutionary mob, implored to be taken back again. One gets used to the din and clamor of society as one gets used to the solemn quiet of a prison. Besides, he was, or had been, a prominent figure in the gallantry show, and he seemed to belong to it.
"One isn't always one's own master," he said, after a pause.
Nell turned her eyes to him.
"Are not you?" she said, a little shyly. "You seem so—so free to do just what you please."
He laughed rather grimly.
"Do you know what I should do if I were as free as I seem, Miss Nell?" he asked. "I should take one of these farms"—he nodded to a rural homestead, one of the smallest and simplest, which stood on the edge of the moor—"and spend the rest of my life making clotted cream and driving cows and pigs to market."
She laughed.
"I can scarcely imagine you doing that," she said.
"Well, I might buy a trawler, and go fishing in the bay."
"That would be better," she admitted. "But it's very tough weather sometimes. I have seen the women waiting on the jetty, and on the cliffs, and looking out at the storm, with their faces white with fear and anxiety for the men—their fathers and husbands and sweethearts."
"There wouldn't be any women to watch and grow white for me," he remarked.
"Oh, but don't you think we should be anxious—mamma and I?" she said.
He looked at her, but her eyes met his innocently, and there was not a sign of coquetry in her smile.
"Thanks. In that case, I must abandon the idea of getting my livelihood as a fisherman," he said lightly. "I couldn't think of causing Mrs. Lorton any further anxiety."
"Shall we have another gallop?" she asked, a moment or two afterward. "We might ride to that farm there"—she pointed to a thatched roof just visible above a hollow—"and get a glass of milk. I am quite thirsty."
She made the suggestion blithely, as if neither her own nor his words had remained in her mind; and Drake brightened up as they sped over the springy turf.
A woman came out of the farm, and greeted them with a cordial welcome in the smile which she bestowed on Nell, and the half nod, half curtsy, she gave to Drake.
"Why, Miss Nell, it be yew sure enough," she said pleasantly. "I was a-thinkin' that 'eed just forgot us. Bobby! Bobby! do 'ee come and hold the horses. Here be Miss Nell of Shorne Mills."
A barefooted, ruddy-cheeked little man ran out and laughed up at Nell as she bent down and stroked his head with her whip. Nell and Drake dismounted, and she led the way into the kitchen and living room of the farm.
The room was so low that Drake felt he must stoop, and Nell's tall figure looked all the taller and slimmer for its propinquity to the timbered ceiling. The woman brought a couple of glasses of milk and some saffron cakes, and Nell drank and ate with a healthy, unashamed appetite, and apparently quite forgot Drake, who, seated in the background, sipped his milk and watched and listened to her absently. She knew this woman and her husband and the children quite intimately; asked after the baby's last tooth as she bent over the sleeping mite, and was anxious to know how the eldest girl, who was in service in London, was getting on.
"Well, Emma, her says she likes it well enough," replied the woman, standing, with the instinctive delicacy of respect, with her firm hand resting on the spotlessly white table; "leastways her would if there was more air—it's the want o' air she complains of. Accordin' to she, there bean't enough for the hoosts o' people there be. Oh, yes, the family's kind enough to her—not that she has much to do wi' 'em; for she's in the nursery—she's nursemaid, you remembers, Miss Nell—and the mistress is too grand a lady to go there often. It's a great family she's in, you know, Miss Nell, a titled family, and there's grand goin's-on a'most every day; indeed, it's turnin' day into night they're at most o' the time, so says Emma. She made so bold, Emma did, to send her best respects to you in her last letter, and to say she hoped if ever you came to London she'd have the luck to see you, though it might be from a distance."
Nell nodded gratefully.
"Not that I am at all likely to go to London," she said, with a laugh. "If I did, I should be sure to go and see Emma."
Emma's mother glanced curiously at Drake; and he understood the significance of the glance, but Nell was evidently unconscious of its meaning.