"I say, sir, you must get your gun down, and we must go for some rabbits," said Dick eagerly. "And I can get a day or two's shooting over the Maltby land as soon as the season opens. I'm sure they'd give it me."
"That's tempting, Dick," said Drake; "and it adds another cause to my regret that I am leaving to-morrow."
"Leaving to-morrow!" exclaimed Mrs. Lorton, with a gasp. "Surely not! You are not thinking, dreaming of going, my dear Mr. Vernon?"
"It's very good of you," he said, picking up his cap and nearing the door. "But I couldn't stay forever, you know. I've trespassed on your hospitality too much already."
"Oh, I say, you know!" expostulated Dick, in a deeply aggrieved tone. "I say, Nell, do you hear that? Mr. Vernon's going!"
"Miss Nell knows that I have been 'going' for some days past, only that I haven't been able to tear myself away. It's nearly five, Miss Nell, and we ordered the boat for half-past four, you know," he added, in a matter-of-fact way.
She rose and ran out of the room for her jacket and tam-o'-shanter, and they went out, leaving Mrs. Lorton and Dick still gloating over their presents.
CHAPTER IX.
Nell walked rapidly and talking quickly as they went down to the jetty, and it was not until the Annie Laurie was slipping out into the bay that she grew silent and thoughtful. She sat in the stern with her arm over the tiller, her eyes cast down, her face grave; and Drake, feeling uncomfortable, said at last:
"Might one offer a penny for your thoughts, Miss Nell?"
She looked up and met the challenge with a sweet seriousness.
"I was thinking of something that you told me the other day—when we were riding," she said.
"I've told you so much——" "And so little!" he added mentally.
"You said that you had been unlucky, that you had lost a great deal of money lately," she said, in a low voice.
He nodded.
"Yes; I think I did. It's true unfortunately; but it doesn't much matter."
"Does it not?" she asked. "Why did you give mamma so costly a present? Oh, please don't deny it. I don't know very much about diamonds, but I know that that bracelet must have cost a great deal of money."
"Not really," he said, with affected carelessness. "Diamonds are very cheap now; they find 'em by the bucketful in the Cape, you know."
She looked at him with grave reproach.
"You are trying to belittle it," she said; "but, indeed, I am not deceived. And the gun, too! That must have been very expensive. Why—did you spend so much?"
He began to feel irritated.
"Look here, Miss Nell," he said; "it is true that I have lost some money, but I'm not quite a pauper, and, if I were, the least I could do would be to share my last crust with—with your people for their amazing goodness to me."
"A diamond bracelet and an expensive gun are not crusts," she said, shaking her head.
"Oh, dash it all!" he retorted impatiently. "The stupid things only very inadequately represent my——Oh, I'm bad at speech making and expressing myself. And don't you think you ought to be very grateful to me?"
She frowned slightly in the effort to understand.
"Grateful! I have just been telling you that I think you ought not to have spent so much. Why should I be grateful?"
"That I didn't buy something for you," he said.
She colored, and looked away from him.
"I—I should not have accepted it," she said.
"I know that," he blurted out. "If I thought you would have done so—but I knew you wouldn't. And so I've got a grievance to meet yours. After all, you might have let me give you some trifle——"
"Such as a diamond bracelet, worth perhaps a hundred pounds?"
"To remember me by. After all, it's only natural I should want to leave something behind me to remind you of me."
"We shan't need such gifts to—to remind us," she said simply. "I think we had better luff."
The sail swung over as she put the helm down; there was silence for a moment or two, then he said:
"I'm sorry I've offended you, Miss Nell. Perhaps it was beastly bad taste. I see it now. But just put yourself in my place——" He slid over the thwart in his eagerness, and coiled himself at her feet. "Supposing you had broken your confounded arm—I beg your pardon!—your arm, and had been taken in and tended by good Samaritans, and nursed and treated like a prince for weeks, and had been made to feel happier than you've been for—for oh, years, would you like to go away with just a 'Oh, thanks; awfully obliged; very kind of you'? Wouldn't you want to make a more solid acknowledgment? Come, be fair and just—if a woman can be fair and just!—and admit that I'm not such a criminal, after all!"
She looked down at him thoughtfully, then turned her eyes seaward again.
"What do you want me to say?" she asked.
"Oh, well; I see that you won't change your mind about these things, so perhaps I'd better be content if you'll say: 'I forgive you.'"
A smile flitted across her face as she looked down at him again, but it was rather a sad little smile.
"I—I forgive you!" she said.
He raised his cap, and took her hand, and, before she suspected what he was going to do, he put his lips to it.
Her face grew crimson, then pale almost to whiteness. It was the first time a man's lips had touched her virgin hand, and——A tremor ran through her, her eyes grew misty, as she looked at him with a half-pained, half-fearful expression. Then she turned her head away, and so quickly that he saw neither the change of color nor the expression in her eyes.
"I feel like a miscreant who had received an unexpected pardon," he said lightly, and yet with a touch of gravity in his voice, "and, like the miscreant, I at once proceed to take advantage of the lenity of my judge."
She turned her eyes to him questioningly; there was still a half-puzzled, half-timid expression in them.
"I want to be rewarded—as well as pardoned—rewarded for my noble sacrifice of the desire to bestow a piece of jewelry upon you."
"Rewarded?" she faltered.
He nodded.
"Yes. After the awful rebuke and scolding you have administered, you cannot refuse to accept some token of my—some acknowledgment of my gratitude, Miss Nell. See here——"
He felt in his waistcoat pocket, then in those of his coat, and at last brought out a well-worn silver pencil case.
"I want you to be gracious enough to accept this," he said. "Before you refuse with haughty displeasure and lively scorn, be good enough to examine it. It is worth, I should say—shall I say five shillings? That, I should imagine, is its utmost value. But, on the other hand, it is a useful article, and I display my natural cunning in selecting it—it's the only thing I've got about me that I could offer you, except a match box, and, as you don't smoke, you've no use for that—because you will never be able to use it, I hope and trust, without thinking of the unworthy donor and the debt of gratitude which no diamond bracelet could discharge."
During this long speech, which he had made to conceal his eager desire that she should accept, and his fear, that she should not, Nell's color had come and gone, but she kept her eyes fixed on his steadily, as if she were