"No, oh, no!" she replied. "I would rather have gone there than to any of the big houses--I mean the county people, Drake. I like to think I am not the sort of person they dreaded. What was it? 'A fine London lady.' Perhaps it would be better for you if I were; but for them--well, perhaps for them it will be better that I am only one of themselves, able to understand and sympathize with them. Drake, you will not forget that I am only a nobody, that I am only Nell of Shorne Mills." He smiled to himself, for he knew that this girl whom he had won was, by virtue of her beauty and refinement, qualified to fill the highest place in that vague sphere which went by the name of "society." "Don't you worry, dearest," he said. "You have won the heart of the Styles family; and that is no mean conquest. That farm on the right is the Woodlands, and that just in front is the Broadlands. You will learn all the names in time, and I want you to know them; I want you to feel that you have a part and lot in them. Nell, do you think you will ever be as fond of this place as you are of Shorne Mills?" "Yes," she said; "because--it is yours, Drake." He looked down at her gratefully. "But you shan't lose Shorne Mills," he said resolutely. "I mean to buy some land there, and build a house, just on the brow of the hill--you know, Nell; that meadow above The Cottage?--and we'll go there every summer, and we'll sail the _Annie Laurie_." So they talked, with intervals of silence filled with his caresses, until they reached the lodge. And as they came up to it, they heard the strains of a violin. Nell awoke with a start. "Oh, I had almost forgotten!" she said remorsefully. "Listen!" Drake whispered. Nell, in the act of pushing the dust cloak from her, listened. Falconer was playing the "Gloria in Excelsis." "Oh, how happy I have been!" she murmured, half guiltily. "And how happy you will be, Heaven grant it, dearest!" Drake murmured, as he released her hand and she got down. CHAPTER XXXIX. "Nell, I believe you are nervous! You're not? Very well; then stand up and look me in the face, and say 'Mesopotamia' seven times!" It was the night of the dinner party at the Hall, at which, as Dick put it, she was to be "on view" as the fiancee of my lord of Angleford, and Nell had come down to the little sitting room dressed and ready to start. Dick and Falconer were also ready, for Falconer had recovered sufficiently to be present, and had voluntarily offered to take his violin with him. "Don't tease her, Dick," said Falconer, with the gentle, protective air of an elder brother. "She does not look a bit nervous." "But I am!" said Nell, laughing a little tremulously; "I am--just a little bit!" "And no wonder!" said Falconer promptly. "It is rather an ordeal she has to go through; to know that everybody is regarding you critically. But she has nothing to be afraid of."