. Drake Vernon" had
left Shorne Mills forever?

"Does she not?" she said easily. "She knows as much about you as I do,
and I am content. But mamma will be pleased, because she likes you. And
Dick"--she laughed, and her eyes glowed with her love for the boy--"Dick
will yell, and will tease me out of my life. But he will be glad,
because he is so very fond of you. What do you do to make everybody like
you so much, Mr. Vernon?"

"Oh, 'Drake, Drake, Drake'!" he said.

"Drake," she murmured, and he stifled the word on her lips with kisses.

"I'm by no means sure that Mrs. Lorton will be pleased," he said, after
a moment. "See here, Nell--I never saw such hair as yours. It is dark,
almost black, and yet it is soft and like silk----"

"And it is all coming down. Ah, no, you cannot coil it up. Let it be for
a moment. Do you really like it? Dick says it is like a horse's mane."

"Dick is a rude young scamp to whom I shall have to teach respect for
his sister. But Mrs. Lorton, dearest--I'm afraid she won't be pleased. I
ought to have told you, Nell, that I'm a poor man."

"Are you?"

She nestled a little closer, and scooped up the sand with her disengaged
hand--the one he was not holding--and she spoke with an indifference
which filled Drake to the brim with satisfaction.

"Yes," he said. "I was not always so poor; but I am one who has had
losses, as Shakespeare puts it."

"I am sorry," she said simply, but still with a kind of indifference.
"Mamma said you must be rich because you--well, persons who are poor
don't keep three horses and give diamond bracelets for presents."

She spoke with the frankness and ingenuousness of a child, and Drake
stroked her hair as he would that of a child.

"Yes, that's reasonable enough," he said. "But I've lost my money
lately. See?"

She nodded, and looked up at him a little more gravely.

"Yes? I am sorry. I suppose it must have seemed very hard to you. I have
never been rich, but I can imagine that one does not like losing his
money and becoming poor. Poor--Drake!"

"Then, you don't mind?" he inquired. "You don't shrink from the prospect
of being a pauper's bride, Nell?"

She laughed.

"Why should I?" she said simply. "We've always been poor--at least,
nearly since I can remember; and we have always been happy, Dick and I.
Now, it would not have been so nice if you had been very rich."

"Why not?" he asked, lifting a tress of her hair to his lips.

She thought for a mom