at he was shocked when I told him that you whiled the dragging
hours away by dancing the cancan, and playing pitch and toss with a
devoted brother."

Nell laughed, and blushed faintly.

"What books are you taking, Dick? Let me see."

"No, you don't! I know the kind of thing you'd send--'The Lessons of
Sickness; or, Blessings in Disguise,' and the 'Pilgrim's Progress.'"

"Don't be an ass, Dick!"

"I'm taking some of my own. Nell, you can post this letter. Yes,
I'll--I'll trust you with it. You'll be a good girl, and not open it, or
drop it on the way," he adjured her, as he climbed upstairs with the
books.

"Here you are, sir. Hope you'll like the selection; there's any amount
of poetry and goody-goody of Nell's; but I fancy you'll catch onto some
of mine. Try 'Hawkshead, the Sioux Chief,' to begin with. It's a
stunner, especially if you skip all the descriptions of scenery. As if
anybody wanted scenery in a story!"

"Thanks," said Mr. Vernon gravely. "I've no doubt I shall enjoy it." But
he took up one of Nell's books and absently looked at her name written
on the flyleaf--"Eleanor Lorton." The first name struck him as stiff and
ill-suited to the slim and graceful girl whose face he only dimly
remembered; "Nell" was better.

CHAPTER IV.

He took up one of the books and read a page or two; but the simple story
could not hold him, and he dropped the volume, and, leaning his head on
his sound arm, stared listlessly at the old-fashioned wall paper. But he
did not see the pattern; the panorama of his own life's story was
passing before him, and it was not at all a pleasing panorama. A life of
pleasure, of absolute uselessness, of unthinking selfishness. What a
dreary pilgrimage it seemed to him, as he lay in the little bedroom,
with the scent of Nell's flowers floating up to him from the garden
beneath, with the sound of the sea, flinging itself against the cliffs,
burring like a giant bumble bee in his ears. If any one had asked him
whether his life had been worth living, he would have answered with a
decided negative; and yet he was young, the gods had been exceeding good
to him in many ways, almost every way, and there was no great sorrow to
cast its shadow over him.

"Pity I didn't break my neck," he muttered. "No one would have
cared--unless it were Luce, and perhaps even she, now----"

He broke off the reverie with a short laugh that was more bitter than a
sigh, and turned his face to the wall.