"I think I will get up in half an hour, if you will be good enough to send Molly up to me," said Mrs. Lorton, sinking onto her pillow as if exhausted by her struggle with the chocolate.
"Yes, mamma," assented the girl. "What will you have for lunch?"
"Lunch!" sighed Mrs. Lorton, with an assumption of weary indifference. "It is really of no consequence, Eleanor. I eat so little, especially in the middle of the day. Perhaps if you could get me a sweetbread I might manage a few morsels. But do not trouble. You know how much I dislike causing trouble. A sweetbread nicely browned—on a small, a very small piece of toast; quite dry, please, Eleanor."
"Yes, mamma, I know," said Eleanor; but she looked out of the window rather doubtfully. Sweetbreads were not easily obtained at the only butcher's shop in the village; and, when they were, they were dear; but she had just paid the long-running bill, and——
"I'll go up to Smart's and see about it," she said. "Is there anything you want in the village, mamma?"
Mrs. Lorton sighed again; she rarely spoke without a sigh.
"If you really want the walk and are going, Eleanor, you might ask Mrs. Porter if she has got that toilet vinegar for me. She promised to get it down from London quite a week ago. It is really too ridiculous! But what can one expect in this hole, and living among a set of barbarians? I know that I shall never grow accustomed to this life of savagery; my memory of the past is too acute, alas! But I must stifle it; I must remember that the great trial of my life has been sent for my good, and I will never complain. Not one word of discontent shall ever pass my lips. My dear Eleanor, you surely are not going to be so mad as to open that window! And my neuralgia only just quiet!"
"I beg your pardon, mamma. The room seemed so hot, and I forgot. I've closed it again; see! Let me draw the eider-down up; that's it. I won't forget the toilet vinegar."
"I thank you, Eleanor; and you might get this week's Fashion Gazette. It is the only paper I care for; but it is not unnatural that I should like to see it occasionally. One may be cut off from all one's friends and relations, may be completely out of the world of rank and refinement, but one likes now and then to read of the class to which one belongs, but from which one is, alas! forever separated."
"I'll get the Fashion Gazette if Mrs. Porter has it, mamma. I won't be long, and Molly will hear you if you want her before the time."
Mrs. Lorton sighed deeply in acknowledgment, and Nell left the room.
She had been bright and girlish enough while romping with her brother, but the scene with her stepmother had left its impression on her face; the dark-gray eyes were rather sad and weary; there was a slight droop at the corners of the sweetly curved lips; but the change lent an indescribable charm to the girlish face. Looking at it, as it was then, no man but would have longed to draw the slim, graceful figure toward him, to close the wistful eyes with a kiss, to caress the soft hair with a comforting hand. There was a subtle fascination in the very droop of the lips which would have haunted an artist or a poet, and driven the ordinary man wild with love.
Mrs. Lorton had called Shorne Mills a "hole," but as a matter of fact, the village stood almost upon the brow of the hill down which ran the very steep road to the tiny harbor and fishing place which nestled under the red Devon cliffs; and barbaric as the place might be, it was beautiful beyond words. No spot in this loveliest of all counties was more lovely; and as yet it was, so to speak, undiscovered. With the exception of the vicarage there was no other house, worthy the name, in the coombe; all the rest were fishermen's cots. The nearest inn and shops were on the fringe of the moor behind and beyond the Lorton's cottage; the nearest house of any consequence was that of the local squire, three miles away. The market town of Shallop was eight miles distant, and the only public communication with it was the carrier's cart, which went to and fro twice weekly. In short, Shorne Mills was out of the world, and will remain so until the Railway Fiend flaps his coal-black wings over it and drops, with red-hot feet, upon it to sear its beauty and destroy its solitude. It had got its name from a flour and timber mill which had once flourished halfway down the coombe or valley; but the wheels were now silent, the mills were falling to pieces, and the silver stream served no more prosaic purpose than supplying the fishing folk with crystal water which was pure as the stars it reflected. This stream, as it ran beside the road or meandered through the sloping meadows, made soft music, day and night, all through the summer, but swelled itself into a torrent in the winter, and roared as it swept over the smooth bowlders to its bridegroom, the sea; sometimes it was the only sound in the valley, save always the murmur of the ocean, and the shrill weird cry of the curlew as it flew from the sea marge to the wooded heights above.
Nell loved the place with a great and exceeding love, with all the love of a girl to whom beauty is a continual feast. She knew every inch of it; for she had lived in the cottage on the hill since she was a child of seven, and she was now nearly twenty-one. She knew every soul in the fishing village, and, indeed, for miles around, and not seldom she was spoken of as "Miss Nell, of Shorne Mills;" and the simple folk were as proud of the title as was Nell herself. They were both fond and proud of her. In any cottage and at any time her presence was a welcome one, and every woman and child, when in trouble, flew to her for help and comfort even before they climbed to the vicarage—that refuge of the poor and sorrowing in all country places.
As she swung to the little gate behind her this morning, she paused and looked round at the familiar scene; and its beauty, its grandeur, and its solitude struck her strangely, as if she were looking at it for the first time.
"One could be so happy if mamma—and if Dick could find something to do!" she thought; and at the thought her eyes grew sadder and the sweet lips drooped still more at the corner; but as she went up the hill, the fine rare air, the brilliant sunshine acted like an anodyne, and the eyes grew brighter, the lips relaxed, so that Smart's—the butcher's—face broadened into a smile of sympathy as he touched his forehead with a huge and greasy finger.
"Sweetbreads! No, no, miss; I've promised the cook up at the Hall——There, bless your heart, Miss Nell, don't 'ee look so disappointed. I'll send 'em—yes, in half an hour at most. Dang me if it was the top brick off the chimney I reckon you'd get 'ee, for there ain't no refusin' 'ee anything!"
Nell thanked him with a smile and a grateful beam from her gray eyes, and then, still lighter-hearted, went on to Mrs. Porter's. By great good luck not only had the toilet vinegar arrived from London, but a copy of the Fashion Gazette; and with these in her hand Nell went homeward. But at the bend of the road near the cottage she paused. Mrs. Lorton would not want the vinegar or the paper for another hour. Would there be time to run down to the jetty and look at the sea? She slipped the paper and the bottle in the hedge, and went lightly down the road. It was so steep that strangers went cautiously and leaned on their sticks, but Nell nearly ran and seemed scarcely to touch the ground; for she had toddled down that road as a child, and knew every stone in it; knew where to leave it for the narrow little path which provided a short cut, and where to turn aside for the marvelous view of the tiny harbor that looked like a child's toy on the edge of the opal sea.
Women and children came out of the cottages as she went swiftly past, and she exchanged greetings with them; but she was in too great a hurry to stop, and one child followed after her with bitter complaint.
She stood for a moment or two talking to some of the men mending their nets on the jetty, called down to Dick, who was lying—he was always reclining on something—basking in the stern of his anchored boat; then she went, more slowly, up the hill again.
As she neared the cottage, a sound rose from the house and mingled with the music of the stream. It was the yelp of staghounds. She stopped and listened, and wondered whether the stag would run down the hill, as it sometimes did; then she went on. Presently she heard another sound—the tap, tap of a horse's hoofs. Her quick ear distinguished it as different from the slow pacing of the horses which