She had been taught to laugh at sentiment, to regard admiration as valueless unless it came from a millionaire; to sneer at love unless it paced, richly clad and warmly shod, from a palace. She had graduated in the School of Fashion, and had passed with high honors. There was no more beautiful woman in all England than Lady Lucille; few possessed greater charm; men sang her praises; artists fought for the honor of hanging her picture in the Academy; the society papers humbly reported her doings, her sayings, and her conquests; royalties smiled approvingly on this queen of fashion, and not a single soul, Lady Lucille herself least of all, realized that this perfection was but the hollow husk and shell of beauty without heart or soul; that behind the lovely face, within the graceful form, lurked as selfish and ignoble a nature as that which stirs the blood of any drab upon the Streets. "Drake!" she said. "Why! I'd no idea! What are you doing here?" He motioned her to a seat with a wave of his pipe, and she sank down on the stone slab, after a careful glance at it, and eyed him curiously but with still a trace of her first embarrassment. She looked a perfect picture, as she sat there, with the steep, descending wall, the red Devon cliffs, the blue, glittering sea for her background; a picture which might have been presented with a summer number of one of the illustrated weeklies; and all as unreal and as unlike life as they are. It is true that she wore a yachting costume exquisitely made and perfectly fitting; and Drake, as he looked at it, acknowledged its claims upon his admiration, but he knew it was all a sham, and, half unconsciously, he compared it with the old worn skirt and the serviceable jersey worn by Nell, who had gone up the hill--how long ago was it? Nell's face and hands were brown with the kiss of God's sun; Lady Lucille's face was like a piece of delicate Sevres, and her hands were incased in white kid gauntlets. To him, at that moment, she looked like an actress playing in a nautical burlesque at the Gaiety; and, for the first time since he had known her, he found himself looking at her critically, and, notwithstanding her faultless attire--faultless from a fashionable point of view--with disapproval. "You are surprised to see me, Luce?" he said. "Of course I am," she replied. "I'd no idea where you were. I've written to you--twice." "Have you?" he said. "That was good of you. I've not had your letters; but that's my fault, not yours. I told Sparling not to send any letters on." She looked down, as if rather embarrassed, and dug at the interstices of the rough stone pavement with her dainty, and altogether unnautical, sunshade. "But what are you doing here?" she asked. "And--and what's the matter with your arm? Isn't that a sling?"