"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 moment. "Oh, don't you see? I should have felt that you had been foolish to--to love me----" There was an interlude. Should he ever grow tired of kissing her? he asked himself. "And I should have been afraid." "Afraid of what?" "Well, that you would be ashamed of me when you took me into the society of fashionable people, and----Oh, I am very glad that you are not rich! That sounds unkind, I am afraid." "Nell," he said solemnly, "I have long suspected that you were an angel masquerading as a mere woman, but I am now convinced of it." She laughed, and softly rubbed her cheek against his arm. "And I have long suspected that you were a rich man and a 'somebody' masquerading as a poor one, and I am delighted to hear that I was mistaken." He started at the first words of her retort, but breathed a sigh of relief as she concluded. "Poor or rich, I love you, Nell," he said, with a seriousness which was almost solemn, "and I will do my level best to make you happy. When you are my wife----" The blood rushed to her face, and her head dropped. "That will be a long time hence," she whispered. "No, no!" he said quickly, passionately. "I couldn't wait very long, Nell. But when you are my wife, I will try to prove to you that poor people can be happy. We shall just have enough to set up a house in some foreign land." She looked up at him gravely. "And leave mamma and--Dick? Yes?" The acquiescence touched him. "You won't mind, dearest--you won't mind leaving England?" She shook her head. "How cold and cruel I have become," she said, as if she were communing with herself. "But I do not care; I feel as if I could leave any one--go anywhere--if--if--I were with you!"