Lord Loveland Discovers America

By C. N. and A. M. WILLIAMSON

Authors of "Set in Silver," "The Princess Passes," "My Friend the Chauffeur," "The Car of Destiny," "The Princess Virginia," etc.

With Four Illustrations in Color
By GEORGE BREHM

A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

Copyright, 1910, by Doubleday, Page & Company

Published January, 1910

Copyright, 1908, by The McClure Company

TO MINDA

"... seeing his namesake's niece struggling with a wind-blown rug, he had tucked it round her feet"

CONTENTS

LORD LOVELAND DISCOVERS AMERICA

CHAPTER ONE

The Discovery of America by Lord Loveland

"Even the Last Resort has refused me." Loveland broke the news to his mother when he had kissed her.

"Miss Mecklenburg?"

"Yes. I begin to realise that I'm a sinking ship. The early rats are deserting me—or declining to come on board. Clever little animals!"

"You shan't sink," protested Lady Loveland, clasping the pretty hands whence all save the wedding ring and its guard had gone to pay a visit of indefinite length to Messrs. Battenborough. "The idiot, to refuse you—with her nose, too."

"She didn't do it with her nose, Mater."

"Val, you know what I mean. And after you'd overlooked her being a Jewess!"

"Yes, it was kind of me, wasn't it? An Italian Prince has just overlooked it, too. Her engagement to Doriana was announced the morning after she'd offered to be a sister to me. It was the size of her purse, not her nose, which caught his eye. But sooner or later he'll beat her."

"I hope so. She deserves it for taking him instead of you. Oh, Val, what a world!"

"Don't grouse, Mater. I might have beaten her if I'd got her, and then there'd have been a scandal. I can't stand women with important looking teeth, and noses which throw their other features into perspective. Besides, Lillah Mecklenburg isn't as young as she's painted."

"So few women are nowadays, dearest," sighed Lady Loveland, who, in living for her handsome son, did not trouble to live up to the past of her complexion, and whose way of doing her hair was alone enough to show that though lenient to Val's weaknesses, she would not condone those of her sister women. "Oh, Val, it's hard you should have to think of such creatures. But what are we to do?"

"That's just where I want your advice," said Loveland, who had come a long way to get it. For the distance from London to the north of Scotland is formidable when birds are out of season.

Lady Loveland was flattered that Val should ask for her advice which, when offered gratuitously, he had never been known to take.

"My advice!" she echoed sadly. "That's all I can give you now! Although I did hope, dear Boy, I must confess. I—I have been trying for Limericks. It was for your sake, and I hoped to win large sums. I thought of lines all night long, and I did send in some splendid ones, a thousand times better than those for which other people (dreadful people, my dear, with names like Hogson, and Dobbs) have won hundreds of pounds. I gave the editors permission to use my name, too; one would have thought, a valuable advertisement for their papers. But all I've won after the greatest efforts has been fifteen and six—an insult—while these Dobbs and Hogsons—I believe the editors must be Socialists. And—the shillings for the postal orders have counted up into pounds. I am crushed with remorse."

"Never mind, dear, you meant it for the best," said Val, who cared more for his mother than for anyone else in the world—except himself. And that he made this exception was largely Lady Loveland's fault, for she had brought him up to believe in but one person of paramount importance, adorning the universe: Perceval George Victor Edward Gordon, thirteenth Marquis of Loveland. "What would a few pounds matter—or a few hundreds even, if you'd won them? The ship's too far under water to be raised with Limericks."

"Dearest—is it as bad as that?"

"It's as bad as anything can be. Look out of your window at the snow falling. Well, that's nothing to the way it's snowing bills outside my window. If you and I can't think of something to clear the weather, I shall have to chuck the army. And even if I do, the bills will still keep on snowing."

"What horrible creatures tradesmen must be," said Lady Loveland, whose opinions had come down to her crusted and spider-webbed from the cellars of the Stone Age. "To think that we'd have had power of life and death over them if we'd lived a few hundred years ago. I wish those times could come back."

"The world at large doesn't agree with you."

"It oughtn't to be at large," replied Lady Loveland, without the smallest idea of a joke. "It's reached a pretty pass when Worms who make boots and uniforms and——"

"And sell wine——"

"Oh, if you like——"

"And jewellery——"

"Very well. Admit the jewellery——"

"And motors. I've wasted a good deal of substance in riotous motor-cars, Mater."

"Oh, I suppose men of your position have some right to enjoy their lives? As I was saying, it's come to a pretty pass when Worms who make or sell what every gentleman must have—things that ought simply to come, like the air you breathe—can turn and rend an officer of the Guards, a peer of the realm, without fear of being crushed."

"If I'd chosen to be a kind of secret advertising agent for tradespeople, I might have been dressed and wined for nothing, motor-carred too, perhaps," said Loveland. "I know some fellows who do go in for that sort of thing. But I'm hanged if I could. I'd rather blow out my brains decently."

"Oh, my darling, don't speak so wildly," implored his mother. "There must be resources we can call upon—if we could only think of them."

"I have called on several people's resources, without any good coming of it." Loveland grinned faintly, though he was in the depths of depression, and had suffered from insomnia for at least a week, between eight and ten in the morning, when so popular a young man should (in his own opinion) have been dreaming of last night's pleasures, instead of worrying how to pay for them.

"There is surely a last resort," went on Lady Loveland.

"Miss Mecklenburg was mine—and she's failed me—thank Heaven!"

"There must be something else."

"Something still worse?"

"Don't be flippant, dearest. I can't concentrate my thoughts when you are. Ah, if we could have let Loveland Castle as well as we did twelve years ago!"

"It's crumbled a lot since. And we're too poor to repair ourselves, let alone our castles."

"You at least don't need repairing," said his mother, gazing at her son with admiration. "You're the handsomest young man in the Kingdom."

Loveland laughed, though he believed her. As a child he had been kissed by all his mother's prettiest friends, because he was so absurdly beautiful, and so precocious. If he had been a plain or stupid boy he might have grown up to be an estimable young man, as Marquises go. "Why don't you say, 'in the world'?" he asked.

"I'm not a woman to exaggerate, dearest. All the Lovelands have been good-looking. One has only to go into the picture gallery at the Castle to see that——"

"Yes. As we can't sell their portraits."

"If we could, your father would have done it when he sold the Town house. But you will be so confusing, Val. My argument is, that as you're the best looking and the cleverest——"

"I don't know a blessed thing, my dear ladyship. Never had any education. You ought to have sent me to Eton, instead of coddling me up with tutors and——"

"You didn't think so then. I remember well when it was proposed, you flung yourself on the floor and howled."

"So of course that settled it."

"Why, yes. You generally settled things like that. You had such a determined way, dear. But you were born knowing more than many studious, uninteresting young men have forgotten. Then, your South African career! It was like a romance. You, who had been crammed, oh, ever so little, for Sandhurst, and then left there to go to the war when you were a mere child, hardly nineteen—so brave! And then, the Thing you did on the battlefield! Of course you ought to have had the Victoria Cross, but as it was, the newspapers rang with your praises, and I was besieged for your photographs to publish. That deed alone would have made you a personage of consideration, even without your rank."

"I've told you lots of times, Mater, the whole thing was a sort of accident. I couldn't bear the chap. If I'd stopped to think, I don't believe I'd have run back a step to drag him out from under fire. But I was there, hauling him away, before I knew what I was doing."

"Yes, you have told me—and other people. But no one believes you. How could they? They see it's your modesty." (Lord Loveland's mother was perhaps the one person on earth who would have attributed to him this quality.) "And as for disliking the young man whose life you saved at the risk of your own, of course that proves you all the more noble. Everybody must see that."

"Oh, well, it's a jolly good thing for me if they do," said Val, mechanically passing his hand over the scar on his forehead, which became him like a hall mark or a halo. It, together with the South African brown that never quite faded, had made him still more ornamental in the eyes of the pretty young married women with whom he was popular. Also in the eyes of girls, who liked to dance and flirt with Lord Loveland, even though they preferred to marry Dukes and Princes. "But what are you working up to so elaborately, Mater?"

"To your Prospects. There's no young man so liked and wanted everywhere."

"Oh, I'm fair at polo: I can ride straight, and shoot a bit," said Loveland with a pretence at self-depreciation he was far from feeling. "I get asked to all the amusing house parties. But you know as well as I do, that stopping at such places is a lot more expensive than swaggering about at the most expensive hotels in Europe."

"I know, dearest," sighed the devoted lady who by industrious spoiling had made him what he was. "I was only going on to say that you are a personage of importance; never think you're not. As for the two or three wretched girls who have hurled themselves at the heads of princes, when they might have had you—why, our English heiresses are growing disgustingly conceited and ambitious, quite unmaidenly, and let them regret their mistakes—you needn't. Val, you want my advice. Well, I've had an inspiration, I do believe, a real inspiration. Why don't you go to America?"

"To try ranching?"

"Good Heavens, no, my son! To try marrying. In America you'll succeed brilliantly. Why not run over and see what there is?"

She spoke as if to see meant to have, notwithstanding certain failures nearer home. But Loveland's sense of humour, which had a real existence, did not always bestir itself when his own affairs were in question. When things come too close to the eye, one is apt to lose the point of view. And Loveland did not laugh at his mother's suggestion.

"Oh, girls!" he said, distastefully. "Why go there for them? Plenty come over here to collect us."

"Ye—es. But think of the competition. There are still unmarried Dukes. It's so annoying, there always seem to be Dukes, and foreign semi-Royalties who might better stop in their own countries than prowl about ours, seeking what they may devour."

"That's what you propose my doing in the States."

"Oh, that's different. The Americans would be the foreigners, not you."

"They don't look on themselves in that light."

"Let them look at you—the girls I mean—in any light, there, on their native heath, where practically no competition can exist. For who ever heard of an American heiress marrying an American man?"

"I suppose it must happen sometimes," said Val.

"It's never in the newspapers. No, dearest, I believe that is why, according to statistics, there are so many more men than women in the States. The girls marry our men. And really some of them are quite presentable."

If any one of three or four beautiful and charming Duchesses had heard the tone in which old Lady Loveland said this, she would have laughed or sneered, according to her mood.

"Do you know many Americans, Val?" his mother went on, thoughtfully.

"Hardly any except Jim Harborough, and—er—his cousin who has married Stanforth."

(This was another instance of a misguided young woman who preferred a Duke to the Marquis. Therefore she remained nameless between mother and son.)

"Mr. Harborough would, I suppose, give you letters of introduction to the Right People over there?"

"Oh, yes, I suppose he would. He doesn't approve of me; but he couldn't refuse letters to his wife's cousin."

"Doesn't approve of you, indeed! What impertinence! But perhaps he's jealous, and thinks you were once in love with Betty. I feared it myself before she paid that visit to the States which turned out such a success. Just as I'm sure yours would, if you went."

"I never was in love with Betty. First cousins are a bit too near to be interesting. One's generally known them since the stage when they were silly over dolls. Besides, Betty looks too much like me. I don't care for yellow-haired, blue-eyed girls."

"It's just as well you didn't care for Betty. Such a marriage would have been disastrous. But she's a sweet girl, and must have made a good many friends in the States. There was the young woman Mohunsleigh married, for instance. I believe he met her through Betty. Oh, Val, you really ought to go over. I'm sure you'd be the greatest success."

"Perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea," Loveland patronized his mother's inspiration. "Of course Harborough and Betty would both give me letters. If I had to marry—horrid bore, at my age!—and could afford to choose, I'd take an English girl of the right sort. But Americans are a lot better than English ones of the wrong sort; middle class mushrooms who've shot up in a night—on the strength of Pale Pills for Pink People, or Corsets, or Disinfectants. If a man's a beggar he must be content with the wine and wives of the country where he begs. American girls, no matter what they've sprung from, seem adaptable; and anyhow, people are tolerant of any queer ways they may have."

"That's true," agreed Lady Loveland, who had never in her life spoken to an American girl, but was now eager to become Dowager for the sake of a desirable one. "If you went to New York—or somewhere—you'd see enough girls to feel you were picking out the best. Oh, you would virtually have a clear coast! And judging from novels I've read, everybody in American society would be fighting for the honour of entertaining you, racking their brains to get up the most wonderful spectacles for your amusement."

"They wouldn't amuse me," said Loveland, in the blasé way he had cultivated since he came back a wounded hero of nineteen, in the last year of the South African war. "I should be there purely on business." But though he spoke like a tired man of forty rather than a happy and healthy one of twenty-six or seven, he was beginning to lean towards his mother's advice. He could easily get long leave. He had a couple of months due to him. During a tour of inspection in the States he would be free from all the bills that flesh is heir to, as he would have no settled address, until the "business" that took him over was settled. After that, when his engagement was published in the papers, tradesmen would hold their hands.

"It oughtn't to take you many weeks," Lady Loveland was reflecting aloud, "if you went at the right season, and to the right place."

"The Season is different for different places over there, Betty says," remarked Loveland, who now, having discovered America as a spot worthy of note on the world's map, was ready to explain it to his mother.

"How odd!" exclaimed Lady Loveland, to whom all things were odd, and scarcely proper, if they were not as in Great Britain. "But oh, of course, you only mean that they go to one place to shoot at a certain time, to another to hunt at a different time, as We do——"

"Not exactly that, I think," said Val, getting out of his element. "I believe it's something to do with the thermometer. Betty went in summer, and was obliged to stop at Newport. One reads things about Newport."

"Yes. Though I forget what," replied his mother, dismissing Newport. "But in the States there must be heiresses abounding in great quantities everywhere, as all American girls appear to be rich in more or less degrees. They flock to Europe from towns with the most extraordinary names. I don't know why it's happened to stick in my memory, but I know there was one—Oshkosh, or something truly awful of that sort. A young person from there, with millions, actually millions, married the Marquise de Merpoule's third son, if you remember, a most unprepossessing youth, whose face looked like an accident."

"I hardly think I should have to go as far afield as Oshkosh, wherever it may be," said Loveland, glancing at his double in the mirror—where was reflected also the worn furnishing of his mother's drawing-room. With a pang he saw the sorry background and forgot himself for a moment in thinking of Loveland Castle—a very noble, dull palace, all marble, gold plate, portraits and precedence when in its prime; echoing sadness now, until such time as the heir might redeem it with some fair lady's dollars. The murmur of those echoes depressed him, as did the white whirl of snow veiling the windows of the shooting lodge whither Lady Loveland had retired to live upon nothing, that he might have something.

But his mother was happy in prophetic thoughts of a future, when Val should have saved his own and the family's fortunes. "Of course you won't need to go to Oshkosh," she said. "Very likely they'd have small-pox or Red Indians there. I only meant that if there could be millions in a town with such a name, what must there be in others more important and easier to get at?"

"I'll stick to the important ones that are easy to get at."

"That means you are making up your mind to go?"

"It's practically made up—thanks to you, Mater. I believe in quick decisions."

"How like your father! After selling the house in Grosvenor Square, he made up his mind in ten minutes to go to Monte Carlo, and——"

"Don't compare that decision with this, for Heaven's sake. It wouldn't be lucky."

"No, dearest," said Lady Loveland meekly, her delicate nose reddening with reminiscences. "Well then, it's quite settled. I feel it's for the best. And I can trust you to bring me a daughter-in-law to be—well, not to be ashamed of."

"I'll promise you anyhow she shan't disgrace you by her manners, or me by her looks, after I've gone so far to get her."

"Why, you might find something that would do, on the ship, which would save so much time and trouble!" exclaimed Lady Loveland, brightening. "You could marry immediately on landing. And yet—perhaps it would be foolish to do anything irrevocable until you'd looked to see what there was in New York. You mustn't be reckless when so much depends upon prudence. Still it would be wise to sail on a good ship, where you might meet millionairesses. That would be only an ordinary precaution."

"It wouldn't be an ordinary price," said Loveland.

"We must manage it somehow—and a good cabin. You owe that to your position."

"I owe so much already, I may as well owe a little more."

"Val, dear, I asked you not to joke. It confuses me. And I need to concentrate all my ideas upon one point. Let me see. Yes! The pink pearls!"

"The pink what?" asked Loveland, startled.

"I still have them. The double rope, you know."

"I know. Another beastly heirloom."

"Still, one can pawn heirlooms. Your bride can redeem it—and the other things. I've always saved the pink pearls for a great emergency. This is a great emergency. Battenborough ought to give seven or eight hundred. And though seven or eight hundred, as you say, wouldn't go far among the debts, they might send you to America and back."

"I'll have to throw a few sops to Cerberus, if I want new clothes to impress the American girls," laughed Val. "That brute Deedes won't give me so much as a waistcoat unless he gets something on account."

"Pay him something," said Lady Loveland. "Pay what you must. Keep what you can—for yourself. As for me, I want nothing."

"Except a rich daughter-in-law," finished her son, his spirits rising though the snow still fell. After all, it was only October, and there was sunshine elsewhere. In America perhaps it was now shining on his bride to be! "I'll write to Betty about the letters," he said, "after you've given me some tea."

CHAPTER TWO

Between Betty and Jim

One of Loveland's most easily detected virtues was his careless habit of telling the truth. He had never lied, or even fibbed whitely, as a small boy, an idiosyncrasy which had often seriously inconvenienced his mother and other relations whose pet failings or economies he had ruthlessly exposed. But Lady Betty Bulkeley had always maintained that this bold truthfulness of her cousin's was the result of inconsiderateness rather than nobility of soul.

She said (and she ought to have known, as she had been acquainted with him since she was two, and he eight, years old) that he did not bother to think of polite fibs, simply because the feelings of others were not for him of enough importance to seem worth saving at the cost of mental effort. Besides, according to Betty, Val took an impish delight in shocking people. As for blurting out the truth about his own affairs, the habit sprang from that impishness, in idle moods, and a sublime indifference to public opinion in serious states of mind. Now, in his letter to Betty asking for introductions, he made no attempt to cover his real intentions with the roses of pretty fiction.

He let it appear plainly that he thought his cousin, having visited America and snatched a millionaire from the matrimonial grab-bag, ought gladly to help him succeed in the same game.

"The wretch!" said Betty, in the midst of reading Loveland's brutally frank letter to Jim, her American trophy, "I believe he has the impudence to think I married you for money! I'd like to shake him, and box his silly, conceited ears."

"They may be silly and conceited, but they're exactly the shape of yours, darling, so I couldn't find it in my heart to box them, no matter how much good it might do their owner," said Jim Harborough, who had been Betty's husband for nearly a year, and was joyously watching her triumphs as a young married woman.

Naturally Betty kissed him for this speech, as they were at breakfast alone together, the servants banished.

"Well, anyway, we won't give him the letters," she said when she had gone back to her own place—not far away.

"Won't we?" asked Jim, with a thoughtful air.

"No, certainly not," returned Betty. "I like your country-women, and I won't deliberately let Loveland loose to prey upon them."

"I 'guess' they can take care of themselves," said Jim, putting on his Yankiest accent.

"I don't know. Some of them might fall in love with him," suggested Betty doubtfully. "He's awfully good-looking, with a kind of winning, boyish way, and—a voice that's far too nice to express him, really. One often feels too lenient with Val, as if he were one of one's own pet weaknesses come alive and walking about."

"As for his looks, he's more like you than your own brother is," said Jim, "eyes, dimples, curly hair and all; so you wouldn't want me to hate him, would you? And as for his voice, it's occurred to me that maybe it expresses something in his real self—the hidden self that he and nobody else knows anything about—the self he's never had a chance to develop or find out, because his mother and other people have spoiled him from his babyhood."

"That's very subtle of you, Jim, as well as very kind—and like you," said Betty. "I wish I could think it's true, as he's my cousin. But thank goodness, I for one never spoiled him. I scratched his face once when I was a small girl, and I'm glad. I wish it had left a mark."

"It would have been even a more honourable scar than the one South Africa gave him. But I admit, he is rather an unlicked cub,—at present. I pity the girl who falls in love with him—as he now is."

"Always was and probably ever will be, Loveland without end," finished Betty, flippantly. "The cheek of him, expecting me to ask you for letters, so that he can go over to your country and do his best to make some nice American girl miserable for life—and spend all her money. I shall punish him—since I can't do anything worse—by telling him exactly what I think of him."

"There are other ways of punishing him—more fitting to the crime, perhaps," remarked Jim, thoughtfully.

"What ways?"

"Giving him the letters."

"Jim!"

"And then—and then—well, a lot depends upon whether he's a born egoist, or merely a made one. I haven't quite worked out the idea yet. It's simmering—it'll soon begin to boil."

Whether Jim Harborough's idea had already boiled or not, at all events that same afternoon a fat envelope went out by post, registered, and addressed to The Marquis of Loveland, Cragside Lodge, Dorloch, N. B. In it there were at least ten letters of introduction, all to names the bare mention of which had power to raise the circulation of Society papers in America, or create a flutter in Wall Street. Each envelope enclosed in the big one was left open, so that Loveland might acquaint himself with the terms in which his cousins described him to their millionaire friends.

Perhaps he was slightly aggrieved that they did not paint him in more glowing terms, or dwell upon the honour conferred on the recipients of the letters. But there was no real fault to find, and—as Jim would perhaps have said—it was "up" to Loveland to make his own impression. On the whole, Val was satisfied with what he had got, and condescendingly wrote two lines of thanks to Betty.

CHAPTER THREE

The Inestimable Foxham

Times were bad, said Battenborough, the polite and popular pawnbroker; therefore Lady Loveland got only six hundred pounds on the pink pearls. Two hundred were sprinkled about among Val's creditors, like pepper out of a pot, where such seasoning was necessary. A hundred more were spent outright, with heartburnings, upon obstinate tailors, hatters and hosiers, who would not tail, hat nor hose, except upon instalments of ready money. Fifty pounds were apologetically retained by Lady Loveland, who grudged every penny to herself and especially to her servants. Another fifty a little more than paid for a cabin almost worthy of his lordship on the big ship Baltic. Fifty and some vague dust of gold and silver went into Val's pocket for current expenses; and the remaining hundred and fifty condensed into the form of a letter of credit.

Of course there ought to have been more, much more. But there would have been less had not Loveland's man, Foxham, given notice at the last moment. This inestimable person assured his master that nothing but the most urgent necessity could have induced him to take such a course. He suffered poignantly, Foxham intimated with proper respect, in the idea that another must perform for his lordship those services which had been his pleasure and duty; but Foxham's grandfather had died (even valets have grandfathers) leaving a tidy sum; and as there were peculiarities in the will, Foxham would lose his chance of inheriting if he left England.

Loveland privately thought it almost equivalent to lèse majesté that his man should desert him for such a selfish trifle as private interest. But he would have scorned to retain a servant who wished to leave him; besides, there were advantages in losing even such a treasure as Foxham before the two passages were taken.

Val had learned from a friend that, if you sent your valet second class, you were not able to command his services on shipboard. This seemed a disgusting waste of money, and ought to be protested against in The Times, or somewhere. On the other hand, he could not afford a first-class fare for Foxham.

"I dare say I can get some fellow over there, if everything goes well," said he. "Meanwhile I shall save money on old Fox. He hasn't opened his mouth about wages. Jolly impudent if he had, because of course he knows I'll pay up when its convenient. And anyhow, a hundred and fifty in the letter of credit is the least I can rub along with, on the other side. I must 'look sharp' as Harborough says, and pick up the right girl, so as to get everything in shape as soon as possible, or I may find myself in a mess."

"Don't imagine anything so horrid, darling," said Lady Loveland, anxious to prop up her son's spirits as well as his credit. "Think only of the best. But I'm sorry about Foxham. He turns you out so perfectly."

"Oh, I learned to shift for myself like a regular navvy in South Africa," Loveland consoled her. "A chap has to keep clean and have the right folds in his trousers, whatever happens; and I worried along somehow without disgracing the family. I can do the same now, though it'll be a bore, especially till I get used to it again."

Thus the pink pearl money was apportioned, a little here and a little there, and made to go as far as possible.

Foxham stopped with his lordship till after the return to London, doing the final packing, and all his ordinary work as usual, without a greedy word as to arrears of wages. Perhaps this was due to an angelic disposition; or perhaps he guessed the motive of his master's errand, and was willing to speculate on the result. But Loveland took the man's devotion for granted, without going too deeply into causes.

On getting back to his quarters near Wellington Barracks, Val was somewhat surprised to receive a visit from Harborough, who had never come to call on him before.

"So you've got your leave, I hear, and are sailing for my blessed country in a few days," Jim remarked.

Loveland replied that this was the case, and happened to think of thanking Jim for his letters of introduction.

Harborough answered casually that that was all right; and went on to say that he had read in a paper, or heard from a man, that Loveland had taken his passage on the Baltic.

"Yes," said Val. "I wanted to go over on a good ship."

"Well, the Baltic's a ripping one—couldn't be a better," Jim admitted. "But I should have thought you'd have the curiosity to try the newest thing."

"The Mauretania?" said Loveland. "Don't suppose I could have got a passage on her for the next three or four trips across."

"Perhaps you couldn't," said Jim. "But I can get you one."

"Why, she sails tomorrow, doesn't she?" asked Val.

"Yes," said Jim, "but you can go on her if you like, with a good cabin too, all to yourself."

"My passage is paid for on the Baltic, and my name's on her passenger list," said Loveland.

"Well, it's too late to have your name printed on the Mauretania's passenger list, or perhaps to get back your money for the Baltic," said Jim, "but that needn't stand in your way. You won't have to pay for your cabin on the Mauretania. It's going begging. A friend of mine who can't sail has given his ticket to me, to do with as I like; but as he's a man whose movements make things in Wall Street jump up and down like a see-saw, he doesn't want it known that he's got to stay behind because he's seedy. That's all. If you want to go in his place, go, and say nothing till you get on the other side. By that time he'll be on his way, on a following ship. At least, that's what he hopes."

"Do you mean, that if I want to cross in the Mauretania, I must pass under your friend's name?" asked Loveland, beginning to look haughty; for though he was tempted by the offer, he did not think that another man's name was worthy of his wearing even for five days. He would as willingly have appeared in Bond Street in a second-hand, ready-made coat.

"Oh no, nothing of the sort," answered Jim Harborough, smiling his pleasant smile. "What I meant was, don't go advertising the fact that you've got Henry VanderPot's cabin because he's not well enough to sail. All you'll have to do is to swagger about as if you'd meant to be a passenger on the Mauretania from the beginning of things."

Loveland was prepared to do any amount of swaggering, though he did not say so to Jim, or indeed acknowledge it to himself. He replied that, if this were the only condition, he would accept the ticket, and instruct Foxham (as he would not have time himself) to try and sell the passage which he had paid for on the Baltic.

"Fox'll have several days to do it in, and I'll tell him if he brings it off, there's ten per cent for himself," said Val. "Meanwhile I'll be enjoying myself on the Mauretania."

"Meanwhile you'll be enjoying yourself on the Mauretania," echoed Jim.

"I suppose there are sure to be a lot of millionaires on board?" suggested Val.

"Sure to be, even at this time of year."

"With pretty daughters?" Loveland's tone and air in making this addition were so conceited that Jim would have wanted to kick him if he had not looked so ridiculously like Jim's own adored and beautiful Betty. Besides, the scar showed white on the brown. This had been a brave boy. Jim was inclined to believe that he was worth reforming.

"With pretty daughters," Harborough repeated, his tone quiet though his eyes showed a danger signal. "However, be prudent. Don't make up your mind too soon. The best fish aren't always caught in the deep sea. One waits to have a look round the markets."

Loveland grinned. "Thank you for the tip. I won't forget."

"Not likely that you'll hold yourself too cheap, eh?" Jim could not resist that one dig, in spite of the scar, and Betty's laugh in the blue eyes between their black fringes.

But Val did not see the joke, as he assuredly would if it had been aimed at anybody else. Jim having married into the family, ought to uphold the family pride, and Loveland doubted not that he did.

"Rather not," he returned patronizingly. "You needn't be afraid, my dear chap. Very kind of you to think of me for this cabin. And though it's a bit short notice, that can't be helped. Foxham will get me off somehow."

"You'll hardly have time to let people know your change of plan," said Jim. "But of course if you don't mind a little expense you can Marconi to Lady Loveland from the ship."

"Of course," assented Lady Loveland's son, who would not have thought of the attention had it not been suggested to him. "But it will hardly be necessary."

"Perhaps not," said Jim.

CHAPTER FOUR

Lord Loveland Makes a Start

Loveland's only experience of sea life, except for a little yachting, had been in going out to, and returning from, South Africa; but he had learned to take care of himself on shipboard, and though his name was not on the passenger list of the Mauretania, his deck chair was soon placed by an attentive steward in a sheltered corner nearly amidship. This advantage was secured by a tempting tip, a tip out of all proportion to the giver's resources: but then, there were many people on the Mauretania who came on board more like clients returning to a hotel where they had been known by the management for years, than passengers travelling on a new ship; and Loveland did not intend to be defeated in an unequal competition. He wanted the best of everything on this trip, and felt that money would be well spent in obtaining it. He always did feel this when he had any money—or credit—to spend.

Possibly he might have economized coin by parading his title, but though spoiled and conceited he was also a gentleman, and while he might trade upon his position for the matrimonial market, would not flaunt it gratuitously. He considered he would be giving value for value: taking a girl's dollars and making her a Marchioness: but he thought too much of himself to "put on side."

When the deck-steward politely asked if he wished to use a visiting card as a chair-marker, Val told him to write the name of Loveland on a slip of paper or a luggage label; anything would do. So the steward did as he was bidden, ignorant that he served a "lord."

Loveland did not feel that he needed cheap advertisement. It would soon leak out that he was a personage, and, sure enough, it did. When he had discreetly explained to the purser his possession of Mr. VanderPot's cabin, the news of the change went round from steward to steward, and was promptly "spotted" as a tit-bit by the greatest gossip on the ship, who happened to inhabit the stateroom opposite.

Major Cadwallader Hunter (a retired major, of course; he would not have had time to develop his qualities while on the active list) was told that he had Loveland for a neighbour, and looked at the cabin door with kindling interest. Being himself, he had studied the passenger list, as a collector of antiques is wont to study the announcements of sales. He could have rattled off by heart all the names worth rattling, and he was certain that Lord Loveland's had not been among them.

Major Cadwallader Hunter was an American of a type laughed at by the best of his own countrymen. He knew his Burke and Debrett better than many an Englishman even of that middle class which can afford to be ignorant of no detail concerning the aristocracy. He was aware that there existed a Marquis of Loveland who was young and unmarried; he knew all about his family connections, and he wondered how such an important gentleman had strayed on board the Mauretania unheralded. "I suppose this fellow must be the Loveland, of course," he said to himself. "But why not be published frankly on the passenger list? Can there be a secret?"

At this moment Loveland walked out from his stateroom, having come below for pipe and tobacco-pouch. He caught Major Cadwallader Hunter staring at his door, and gave him a brief yet supercilious glance. To some men it would have seemed an offensive glance, but Major Cadwallader Hunter was not to be easily offended by a man he wished to know. He disappeared into his own cabin, by way of proving that he was a neighbour, not a Paul Pry; but a few minutes later he was on deck, ambling amiably from one group of acquaintances to another, and dexterously avoiding detrimentals.

Cadwallader Hunter aspired to be a leader of society. He was one of those strange beings—heraldic, rampant, disregardant—who are born snobs, in spite of good birth and good breeding. Therefore he was not a genuine article (since no snob can be genuine) but had moulded himself into a thing of airs and affectations. Nevertheless he managed to impress most second-rate people, and some who were first-rate. Those who did not live in New York believed him to be of consequence in that city, and the Paris Herald always reported his comings and goings. He was a thin, well-groomed man, of middle age, with a heart-hiding smile, a high nose and a high voice; gold-rimmed eyeglasses giving glitter to pale, cold eyes; a waxed moustache; a carefully cultivated "English accent," and a marvellous fund of scandalous anecdotes concerning everyone about whom it was worth while to be scandalous. He had at least a bowing acquaintance with all the richest Americans on board, and he mixed with his greetings here and there a careless "Do you know we have Lord Loveland on the ship—the Marquis of Loveland? Such a good-looking young man. One of the oldest and most distinguished peerages in England; family of soldiers since the dark ages, though the less said about some of them since the days of the Georges the better. This boy not so bad as some of the old boys before him. Not to be despised by débutantes, eh? Do I know him?——"

(As a matter of fact, Cadwallader Hunter could count his acquaintances in the British peerage on the fingers of one hand, and have a thumb to spare; for it is the genuine, unaffected, typical Americans, or else the heavily gilded and diamond-incrusted ones whom English people like to know. But this question was bound to come. He had led up to it, and was prepared.)

"Do I know him? Why, in a way we're connections by marriage. You must remember pretty Lady Betty Bulkeley who took us all by storm a year or two ago—sister of the Duke of Stanforth? Jimmy Harborough, whom she married, is I believe a forty-second cousin of mine: and Lady Betty and Lord Loveland are related. So you see——"

And for fear that they should see—something that he did not wish them to see—he pottered away to "get at" Loveland before anyone could possibly have the chance to find out that they two were strangers.

Meanwhile Loveland had not been wasting time.

He thought that Jim Harborough's hint about "deep sea fish" was a wise one, wiser than he would have expected from Harborough. Still, there was no harm in keeping his eyes open; and having kept them open from the first moment after coming on board, he had discovered several very pretty girls. With a certain amount of eagerness, rather as one looks at one's cards when beginning a new rubber of bridge, he glanced over the passenger-list, hoping that some of the names might be identical with those on his letters of introduction. But there were no such coincidences, and he, unluckily, was too ignorant of American society to know which of his fellow passengers were most important. However, he made up his mind that one of the first things to do, was to find out.

Sure of his chair, on which the name of "Loveland" already appeared in the steward's handwriting, he paced up and down and all round the deck, pipe in mouth and hands in pockets. It was a November day, of Indian summer warmth. The huge ship felt no impulse from the waves which fawned upon her sides, and Loveland, who had been bored by the necessity to leave his native land, began suddenly to feel happy, quite boyishly happy.

A great many other people were parading up and down also; pretty girls, walking alone, or with parents, or accompanied by youths with whom they intended to flirt during the voyage. Shrewd-faced men, with eyes good-natured yet keen, and an air of solid importance which might mean millions; handsome, prosperous-looking women whom Loveland guessed to be Newport and New York hostesses pleased to welcome prowling Marquesses; and besides these, numbers of vague persons whom to meet once was to forget twice.

After half an hour's walk, Val had selected two girls from the "rosebud garden" which, he felt, bloomed for his benefit in this mammoth, floating flower-bed. There were so many attractive ones, that it was difficult to choose, yet Val did not doubt that he had weeded out the best; and he hoped that, of the pair, one might be the principal unmarried millionairess of the Mauretania.

There could hardly have been a greater contrast between girls than between these two whom Lord Loveland had mentally set apart for himself, as a man picks out the most becoming neckties from a box on a shop counter.

One, who walked the deck with an elderly man whose likeness of feature proclaimed him her father, was very tall, almost as tall as Loveland, who could be a six-footer when he took the trouble not to slouch. She was slender in all the right places, and rounded in all the right places, her waist being so slim that she seemed held together only by a spine and a lady-like ligament or two; which means faultlessness of figure according to fashion-plate standards. She had burnished auburn hair, and magnificent yellow-grey eyes rimmed with dark lashes. Her nose was aquiline, her mouth red and drooping at the corners, a combination which made her profile closely resemble a famous photograph of the Empress Eugenie in the prime of loveliness.

A number of the nicest looking people who came and went on deck seemed glad to claim acquaintance with this girl and her handsome father; but though they were warmly greeted again and again, the girl maintained a cool dignity not unworthy of Betty Bulkeley's mother, the Duchess of Stanforth.

Val said to himself that the Mater would be pleased with a daughter-in-law of this type, and that such a girl would never make her husband ashamed. He could not imagine falling in love with her hard brilliance; but then he wasn't going to America to fall in love. His intentions were strictly businesslike. And this girl was bound to be admired everywhere. She would look an ideal hostess, entertaining house parties at Loveland Castle, when her money had restored it to all and more than its ancient splendour.

Loveland's second choice might have been his first, for some reasons, and in fact she was his first by impulse; only she did not look as obviously an heiress as the other. Neither was she so obviously a beauty; yet her charm leaped at the beholder with the briefest glance, especially if that beholder were a man; leaped at him through his eyes, and thrillingly through his nerves, in a mysterious, indescribable, curiously interesting way.

She was not very tall, and she was a slim slip of a creature, not in the least like a fashion plate, but suggestive of soft natural curves, even in her navy-blue tailor-made frock.

If she had been stage-struck, and had asked for a chance in the chorus, a theatrical manager would have found himself giving it to her, he hardly knew why, more because she said she wanted it than on the strength of her voice, or form, or features. Then, having yielded so far to her magnetism, he would have said to himself, "She isn't striking enough for the front row, or even the second. She must go into the third." And there she would have gone docilely. Yet the critics and all other men with eyes would have picked her out; and presently she would have been more noticed than the beauties in the front row. By and by, when there arose a little part with a few lines to speak, she would have got it; and at last, in some way or other, it would have been she who was making the "hit of the piece."

Lord Loveland did not say anything of this sort to himself, but he felt a faint electric shock of interest every time they passed and repassed each other; though after the first she did not look at him, with the big brown eyes that surely had the prettiest, most bewitching lashes ever seen.

Really, they were charming eyes. If nothing else were actually beautiful about the girl, her eyes undoubtedly were exquisite. They were very soft, and no man could look into them even for half a second in passing without realizing deliciously that they were a woman's eyes; yet they were not coquettish, except for that piquant effect of the curled lashes. They were full of sympathy and intelligence, and gazed frankly, sweetly out at the world, as if they could understand, and laugh or cry at things which other, commonplace eyes would never even see.

For the rest, she had the clear, colourless skin which shows every change of emotion, a sensitive mouth, not too small for generosity; in the firm little chin, a cleft which meant a keen sense of humour; and a slightly impertinent nose which might mean anything or nothing.

Loveland felt that it would be interesting to know this girl, even if she were not an heiress, but he hoped that she might prove to be one, because it would be hard to learn the wisdom of ceasing to know her if she turned out as poor as himself.

The difficulty in judging these American girls, Val began to think as he watched the charming review, was that they all looked like millionairesses. They walked as if they were so used to being young persons of importance, that they graciously waived the fact of their own greatness: which means, that they had the air of goddesses, or princesses at the least. They were all dressed perfectly, and groomed perfectly. Their frocks fitted perfectly, and every detail of their toilets was perfect, from the buttons of their English gloves to the toes of their American boots. So how was a man to judge which were the ones, and which the other ones?

Val made up his mind at last that he would walk no more, but would sit down and think this question over. Besides, for some moments the enchanting girl in the navy-blue frock had ceased to flit to and fro. Therefore he went towards the sheltered corner where he knew his deck chair was waiting for him, and to his extreme surprise found her comfortably installed in it.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Girl in the Chair

For a moment Loveland was more conceited than he had ever been in his life,—which is saying not a little. He told himself that the girl must have found out who he was, and that this was her artful way of scraping acquaintance. She had taken possession of his chair, with his name upon it, waiting for him to come and claim his property, and expecting the conversation which would be sure to follow.

He was conscious of a shock of disappointment. In spite of the witching, curled eyelashes, he had not fancied her that sort of obvious, flirting girl; and like other spoiled young men a conquest which fell to him easily was less worth making. Nevertheless, he still wanted to know her. No man, even a spoiled one, could help wanting to know a girl with eyes like those: and he intended to go through the whole programme which he believed that she had deliberately planned out for him; yet he wished that she had not made herself so cheap.

The chair next to his was unoccupied, though usurpers were warned off by the name of "Mr. James R. Smythe," boldly painted in black letters across the back. Stretching away to the left was a row of Smythe chairs, which Val did not trouble to count. He merely received the impression of a large family of impending Smythes, and was glad that they were not assembled. Their absence gave him a splendid chance to make the girl with the eyes a present of the flirtation she encouraged.

Val, risking the avalanche of Smythehood which might overwhelm him at any instant, sat down in the empty chair next to his own, expecting the girl to glance up and down, and flutter the coquettish lashes. To his bewilderment her tactics were more subtle. She did not look up at all, but calmly went on reading her book, a volume of disagreeably intellectual suggestion.

This development of the game was interesting, because surprising, but Val still regarded it as a game. He looked at the girl, while she, apparently unconscious of or indifferent to his nearness, slowly turned leaf after leaf. She turned so many that Loveland grew impatient. Besides, a man had begun to walk up and down in front of the line of Smythe chairs, fastening upon him so baleful an eye that he feared at any instant to be dispossessed of his borrowed resting-place.

At last he decided to be bold and wait no longer.

"What am I to do if Mr. James R. Smythe comes along and orders me out?" he asked pleasantly, in a low yet conversational tone.

The girl glanced up for the first time, suddenly and as if startled. She had the air of having been deeply absorbed in her book, and of not being sure that her neighbour had spoken to her. Also she looked extremely young and innocent.

"I said, what am I to do if Mr. James R. Smythe comes along and orders me out?" Val repeated.

"That's what I thought you said," replied the girl, meeting his admiring, quizzical eyes with a somewhat bewildered yet defensive gaze. "But—why should you say it to me?"

"Isn't that rather hard-hearted of you?" asked Loveland.

"I don't understand you at all," said the girl. "You look like a gentleman, so I suppose you can't mean to be rude or impertinent. But if not, you seem to be talking nonsense."

This was straightforward, to say the least, yet her voice was so sweet and girlish, with such a dainty little drawl in it, that the rebuke did not sound as severe as if spoken with sharper accents.

"Of course I don't mean to be rude or impertinent," Loveland defended himself, at a loss for the next move in the game. "But I thought—that is, I mean—you know, that is my chair. I'm delighted you should have it——"

"Your chair?" echoed the girl. "Oh, you are mistaken. No wonder, if you thought that I—but even then, you couldn't have dreamed I'd take it on purpose?"

"No—o, I——" began Loveland, looking guilty.

Her eyes were on him. "You did think so!" she exclaimed. "I see you did. That was why you—and yet I don't see how you could have fancied I should know who you were, unless—Are you a very famous person in the life to which it's pleased London to call you?"

Lord Loveland laughed rather foolishly. But he reddened a little, which made him look boyish, so that the foolishness was rather engaging.

"I think you've punished me enough," he said.

"Then you admit that you deserve to be punished?"

"Perhaps."

"Which means that you did believe I took your chair on purpose."

"I didn't stop to think," said Loveland, telling the truth as usual, but less truculently than usual.

"You are English, aren't you?" the girl asked, looking at him with her brown, bewildering eyes.

"Oh yes," replied Loveland, in a tone which added "Of course." But he would have realised now, if he had not been sure before, that the girl was genuinely ignorant of his important identity.

"I was sure you were. I suppose you don't understand American girls very well, or perhaps any girls yet. But then few men do, really. Except poets or novelists. And you're not a poet or a novelist?"

"Rather not!"

"You speak as though I'd asked if you were a pick-pocket. Do you despise writers?"

"I'd be sorry to be one. Wouldn't you?" He ventured this question, which, if answered, might after all send them on the way towards a more friendly understanding. But he seemed destined to put himself in the wrong—although the girl laughed.

"I am one," she said, "I write stories."

"You're chaffing."

"No, I'm not. Why should you think so?"

"Oh, well, because you don't look as if you wrote."

"Thank you. I suppose you mean that for a compliment. But women who write aren't scare-crows nowadays, if they ever were."

"Well, anyhow, you're too young."

"I've been writing stories—and getting them published, too, ever since I was sixteen. That's some years ago now. Please don't say you wouldn't have thought it! That would be too obvious even for an average American's idea of an average Englishman."

"Are you an average American?"

"Are you an average Englishman?"

"Is it fair to answer one question with another?"

"It's said to be American. Didn't you know that?"

"No," said Loveland. "As you thought, I don't know much about Americans yet. I'm going over to the States to learn."

"The States! How English that sounds! We think we're all of America—all that's worth talking about in ordinary conversation. But, by the way, this isn't ordinary conversation, is it? It began with—something to be punished for, on your part; and a wish to punish on mine. It's gone on—because, being a writing person, I suppose, I'm always trying for new points of view, at any cost. You thought I'd taken your chair—as if it were a point of view. I believe you really did think that."

"I did," admitted Val.

"I wonder why? My aunt's name is on it."

"Oh," said Loveland.

"See," went on the girl, leaning forward, and displaying the label in the deck-steward's handwriting.

"I do see," said Val. "But that happens to be my name."

"Loveland?"

"Yes."

The girl blushed brightly. And she was more attractive than ever when she blushed. "Oh, how very odd! Then perhaps this is your chair! How perfectly horrid." She began to unwind herself from the rug which was wrapped round her as a chrysalis round an incipient butterfly.

"Please don't get up." Loveland's tone was almost imploring. "Do keep the chair. I want you to keep it."

"Thank you very much. But I don't want to keep it, if it's yours, and I think now it probably is. If it weren't, you wouldn't have expected to find it waiting for you in this particular place?"

"But you expected to find yours here."

"No, it wasn't that. But as I was passing, I saw my aunt's name on the back of a chair, and because the deck-steward had been told to put one in a nice sheltered place, I took it for granted that this was hers. I didn't know there was another Loveland on the passenger list."

"I noticed there was a Mrs. Loveland," said Val, "but didn't think much about it, as she wasn't likely to turn out a relation of mine. And my name isn't on the list, I came in the place of—another man."

As he made this explanation, with a slight pause which meant the recollection of his promise to Jim Harborough, Major Cadwallader Hunter went by, walking slowly; and, having long-distance ears, heard as he passed. He was waiting for his chance to "nobble" Lord Loveland; and afterwards he remembered those few last words which he had caught. He seldom forgot anything which could possibly matter, even though it might be of seeming insignificance at the time.

"I'll go and look for the other Loveland chair," said the girl.

"You must do nothing of the sort," exclaimed Val.

"Oh, it's easy to see you're an Englishman. American men don't order us about like that."

Loveland laughed. "I didn't order you about. I ordered you to sit still."

"That's just as bad. You have the air of being used to give orders."

"I am. You see, I'm a soldier."

"Oh, what a relief. I began to be afraid you were a duke."

Loveland had the unusual sensation of feeling comparatively unimportant. When the girl came to find out who he was, she would know that he was less than a duke. And if he had the air of being a duke, she had the air of thinking no duke could possibly be superior to any self-respecting American.

As he reflected upon this extreme point of view, a deck-steward appeared, and was summoned by the girl. She wished to know the situation of the second Loveland chair, and which of the two was her aunt's, which this gentleman's—Mr. Loveland's.

"Or ought I to speak of you as Captain Loveland?" she broke off to ask.

"I'm not a captain yet," answered Val. He did not explain that neither was he "Mr." He left her to discover that fact for herself by and by, as he hoped she would discover a good many other things connected with him. Because by this time he had quite decided that, be she rich or be she poor, he would see a good deal of Mrs. Loveland's niece during the voyage to New York. Afterwards—but then, why begin now to think of an afterwards?

CHAPTER SIX

Catspawing

When the chair of Mrs. Loveland had been indicated, as it soon was by a tactless deck-steward, the girl was obstinate in her determination to seek it. Val went with her, carrying the rug and the book; but as there was no vacant place on either side of the new chair, he was obliged presently to go back to his own. And it was on the way back that Major Cadwallader Hunter's chance came.

"Lord Loveland, I see you don't remember me," he began, attaching himself to the younger man, with an air of "should auld acquaintance be forgot" in the bend of his back, and speaking in a low tone, that his words might not be heard by any curious ears. Then he hurried on, lest Loveland should deny him with undesirable frankness: "Quite natural you shouldn't remember" (which indeed it was, as they had never come within miles of each other) "but I feel I've some right to remind you of my existence, because we're connected in a way. I am Major Cadwallader Hunter——"

"Never heard the name in my life," said Loveland rudely. He thought that his uninvited companion looked like a bore, and he had never yet suffered a bore gladly. A flash of reflection told him that he possessed no envelope in Jim's or Betty's handwriting addressed to Major Cadwallader Hunter. The fellow would hardly be so mildly ingratiating if he were a millionaire with daughters to guard, and Val resented a trumped-up claim of connection.

Cadwallader Hunter could swallow a snub with a smile, but never would he forgive the snubber.

He smiled now; but if Lord Loveland had not been Lord Loveland——

"I'm a distant relative of Jimmy Harborough's," he explained, "and I generally run over to London for a few weeks in the season. Jim seems to be as popular on your side the water as on his own."

Loveland did not trouble himself to reply. If Jim had thought this alleged relative an interesting or profitable person for him to know, the name of Major Cadwallader Hunter would probably have been on one of the introduction envelopes.

Undismayed by the chilling silence, Cadwallader Hunter still walked by Lord Loveland's side and prattled. His next sentence hinted that he possessed in some degree the quality of clairvoyance.

"I suppose Jim's given you lots of letters," he continued, "but it's not likely there's one to me. I'm a mere bachelor, and therefore must take a back place. Jim would naturally send you to married people with big houses of their own, where they can entertain you. Still, in my own small way, I can be useful to strangers, and should be glad to be useful to you, because in my eyes you don't seem quite a stranger. I am, by the by, a great admirer of your cousin, charming Lady Betty, and if you'll allow me to say so, there's a strong family resemblance between you." (Major Cadwallader Hunter had been out of America during Betty's visit, but had seen her photograph.) "If this is your first time on our side, you don't know the ropes yet, and you must let me tell you anything you care to hear; about people, about places, about hotels; about the sights, should you want to see them. I can begin, for instance, by telling you who is Who on this ship. There are several of our millionaires."

Loveland's handsome young face lost its frozen stare. He had taken a dislike to Cadwallader Hunter, but it was not so serious a dislike that he could not bury it. He wanted to know several things which this man might be able to tell, but most of all he wanted to know about the niece of Mrs. Loveland. As he confessed to her, he had passed over the coincidence of names with indifference, when idly noting it on the passenger-list, thinking that the existence of a Mrs. B. Loveland could not concern the Marquis of that ilk. Now, however, if this know-all, officious sort of person could prove that the lady sprang from the same stock, be she no matter how remote a cutting, it would be pleasant news.

Cadwallader Hunter, who was a student of faces, saw the change on Lord Loveland's features and was relieved, though relief brought no liking. He had begun to be anxious as to the result of the conversation, because a failure to thaw on Loveland's part would have been awkward after certain boasts lately made. Now he saw that he had, as usual, taken the right tack, and that his efforts were destined to succeed.

"I know almost everybody on board," went on the American. "That is, everybody who counts."

"Who is that man walking with the tall girl in grey?" Val deigned to enquire, as his first choice among the beauties of the ship came in sight. "Is he someone of importance?"

Cadwallader Hunter naturally understood that it was the girl, not the man, in whom Loveland was interested. "That is Judson R. Coolidge," he replied, "and it is Miss Elinor Coolidge, his only child, who is with him. He is a rich man, though not one of our richest. Made his money in the wholesale dry goods business in Chicago. But Miss Elinor, whom he adores, 'runs' him (the mother's dead); and as the girl knows her market value, she's induced her father to take a big house in New York and a cottage at Newport. Would you care to meet them?"

"Thanks, yes. A little later," answered Val, very civilly for him.

"There are several other pretty young women on board," said Cadwallader Hunter.

"So I've noticed," said Loveland.

"Ah, men of your country appreciate the charming women of ours! You've carried away many of our fairest flowers. And some of the best worth plucking."

"Is that a pun?" asked Loveland, staring at his companion to see if he had the impudence to mean anything.

Major Cadwallader Hunter tittered. He had an irritating little habit of tittering when he was ingratiating himself with new acquaintances. But it was a most refined titter.

"Oh, dear, I see what you mean. But, no indeed, I was quite innocent of any double entendre. I was merely trying my best to be poetical, I assure you. There was no question of 'plucking' in the international alliances of British titles and American dollars I had in mind. A familiar, and, to my idea, suitable combination. But perhaps you disapprove of international marriages?"

"Not I," said Val.

The tone told Cadwallader Hunter all that he wanted to learn. He now knew, if he had not been practically sure before, that Lord Loveland was in search of a rich wife. He saw his way to earning considerable kudos in playing bear-leader to a young and unusually good-looking British peer, and he determined to become that bear-leader, whether the bear yearned for his leadership or not.

"Miss Coolidge is not the only handsome heiress on board. There are others—there are others," he went on airily. "You have only to point out any young lady whose acquaintance you would like to make, and the thing is a fait accompli."

"Do you know a Mrs. Loveland on the ship?" Val enquired, after a slight hesitation which he could hardly have explained to himself.

Major Cadwallader Hunter shook his head. "Now that you speak of it, I think I do recall there being a Mrs. Loveland on the passenger-list, but——"

"She has a niece," said Val.

"Ah?" The elder man pulled a folded passenger-list out of his pocket, and ran his eye down the "L's." "Then the niece has not the same name. But I'll engage to find out all about the ladies for you, if you're interested in them."

Loveland paused for an instant, on the point of refusing the service. But he reflected that making enquiries about unknown ladies was not a dignified proceeding, and that he would prefer to have Major Cadwallader Hunter undertake it, rather than compromise himself.

"It will be easy for me, as I know so many people," volunteered the American.

"Oh, very well. Thank you," said Loveland, stiffly, with that upward inflection of the voice, which can make a "thank you" as irritating as a mosquito-bite.

He was ready now to use Major Cadwallader Hunter for catspawing in all its branches, but did not intend to be over civil in return. He divined that Cadwallader-Hunter by name was a Tuft-Hunter by nature; that vast wealth, or even a really good title was to him balm in Gilead; and that he was not one of those sensitive souls who find it difficult to be kind to the rich, for fear of being misunderstood by the world.

And the would-be leader was delighted to become Lord Loveland's catspaw, because he hoped that his way of handling the chestnuts would do him honour. He believed that, if through Lord Loveland he did not become King of all the lions in New York that season, he might at least be King's jester.

Presently, still smiling, he left Val stretched luxuriously in the labelled deck-chair, and trotted away to tell more people what a charming fellow Lord Loveland was. All the while it would have done his soul good—what there was of it—to box Val's ears. But it would have done him still more good to be re-souled or even half-souled, for all that he had ever possessed was long ago worn to rags.

Major Cadwallader Hunter prided himself on being able to find out everything about everybody, even when starting from the point of complete ignorance, and handicapped by a time limit. Indeed, he had a nice detective instinct, and putting it to use was one of the games he played best. But he found himself confronted with difficulties in the case of Mrs. Loveland and her niece.

It was simple to find out the girl's name, and that Mrs. Loveland, the aunt, was a delicate little person, at that time of life when sensible women cling no longer to the ragged edge of youth, as a bat clings to a shutter. It was easy to learn (stewards and stewardesses reveal such things, if handled by experts) that Mrs. Loveland had slipped into her berth on starting, with the intention of remaining there during the whole voyage, weather or no weather. But as to Wealth and as to Ancestors (Cadwallader Hunter was as devout a worshipper of Ancestors as any Chinaman) the matter was more difficult. However, he was eventually fortunate enough to stumble upon an acquaintance, a Mrs. Milton, who had met Mrs. Loveland and her niece while travelling in England. Mrs. Milton was a charming woman, but she had some weaknesses. In a sojourn of six weeks, she had become so much more English than the English that she had taken to calling her daughter Fanny "Fawny." She pitied Mrs. Loveland and Mrs. Loveland's niece because they were so—"so unnecessarily American, don't you know?" Also she was perfectly certain from their way of doing things, from remarks they had let drop, and answers they had given to her questions, that they were nobodies. They lived in a town in the middle west, knew no New York people, poor things, and were altogether provincial. They had been abroad for the first time, had enjoyed themselves with the most countrified enthusiasm everywhere, and were so much interested in history and dull subjects of that sort that Fawny's mother fawncied they were perhaps schoolteachers on their holidays, especially as they were so reserved about their own affairs, that there must be something they were ashamed of.

Major Cadwallader Hunter was glad to hear these damaging details, because it was evident that the Englishman was taken with Mrs. Loveland's niece. The self-appointed bear-leader wanted his bear for more important girls.

It was not till nearly dinner-time that he was able to make his report to Loveland. Meanwhile, during his leader's absence, the bear had found out some things for himself, and had forgotten Major Cadwallader Hunter. Val had felt the need of another constitutional, and seeing his namesake's niece struggling with a wind-blown rug, had tucked it round her feet. They were pretty feet, and Val was very fastidious about a woman's feet. These were even prettier, and many sizes smaller than Miss Coolidge's, therefore he was glad that a next-door chair stood empty for the moment. He begged so meekly to sit down and talk for a little while, that his mother, could she have heard him, would have trembled lest he might be sickening for something. But he had talked for more than a "little while," and then had been forced to go because the owner of the next-door chair came back and hovered suggestively.

Loveland had only just got up, and was taking his leave when Major Cadwallader Hunter arrived from the Music-room, where he had been gleaning facts. "She is a Miss Dearmer," he announced.

"Oh, I know that already," Val returned, ungratefully. "She told me herself."

"Lesley Dearmer."

"I hadn't got as far as the Lesley yet." Val laughed lightly, for he had had a delightful conversation with Miss Dearmer. That cleft in her chin had not proved a trap to catch the unwary, whom it tempted to expect a merry wit. And while Loveland sat beside her, she had flung bright thought after bright thought, carelessly as a cashier in a bank shovels out gold for other people's purses. He had never met a girl like Miss Dearmer. No wonder she could write stories. But he felt it was far more suitable that she should entertain the Marquis of Loveland.

"Of course you must do exactly as you please," said Cadwallader Hunter, "but from what I've learned, I fancy you can pass your valuable time better on this trip than in the society of Miss Dearmer."

"What do you mean?" Val flashed out at him.

"Oh, only that it's just as I thought. She and her aunt are ordinary, provincial little people, with no money or connections. They live in the southwest, near a city called Louisville. These ladies, aunt and niece, have been 'doing' as much of Europe as they could afford, and are now returning to their native wilds, where they'll probably stay for the remainder of their respectable, colourless lives."

The picture was not alluring, and Loveland's face fell.

"Mr. and Miss Coolidge are at your table," said Cadwallader Hunter, "and I've just been arranging to sit there, too, so I can introduce you this evening at dinner. You'll be next Miss Coolidge, and opposite, you'll have a very nice girl, a Miss Fanny Milton, who admires Englishmen. Her mother is a youngish woman with a temper. She doesn't get on well with her husband, but he is a very rich man who must give a dot of at least five hundred thousand to his daughter. These people are friends of mine, and will be very pleased to know you."

Loveland did not doubt the last statement, nor did he feel grateful to his benefactor, this general provider of charming, rich young ladies. He was sulkily regretting that Miss Dearmer was poor and provincial, and altogether impossible as the future Lady Loveland.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Guide, Philosopher and Friend

"Well," said the girl, "what do you think of things?"

"I think," answered Loveland, "it's a beastly shame we're not put at the same table."

"I mean of things in general."

"I prefer to think of you in particular."

"It wouldn't pay," said the girl, with one of her whimsical smiles.

Loveland looked at her sharply. "What makes you say that?" he wanted to know.

"Because it's true."

"Why do you insinuate that I only want to do things that pay?"

"I told you I wrote stories, didn't I? Well, to write stories, one must make a study of Man. I do. And I never found it dull yet."

"I'm glad you don't find it dull where I'm concerned," said Val. "But I'm not glad you consider me a swine."

"Lucky I've just been in England, and heard other Englishmen talk," said the girl. "If not, I should hardly understand that pretty expression."

"So you've been making a study of other Englishmen? What did you think of us?"

"That you, as a race, are very tall and tweedy. And that you aren't precisely dissatisfied with yourselves."

It was the next morning, and they were pacing up and down the long white deck. Loveland had joined Miss Dearmer as she walked, and she had not been repellent in her manner. Yet somehow her friendliness did not encourage him to increasing conceit. Even before she had made that little remark about studying Man, he had vaguely felt that she read him as if he were a cypher of which she had found the key.

"I hope you met the right kind of men," he said.

"You mean, men like you? You see, I know who you are, now."

"Who told you anything about me?"

"Miss Milton."

"Oh, you know her—daughter of the white-faced woman, pretty, blushy little thing who sits at my table?"

"Yes. We were travelling in England at the same time, and met often at hotels."

"What did Miss Milton say about me?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"Yes. I'm not a coward."

"She said she wondered if you were going over to our country to try and marry an American girl."

"By Jove! Well, supposing I do try, what's your opinion? Do you think I stand a good chance of bringing it off?"

"It's rather soon for me to judge."

"You seem to have made up your mind quickly about some of my other qualities. About my wanting to do things which pay, for instance."

"You haven't forgiven me that? It might pay to 'try' and marry an American girl."

"Well," admitted Loveland on an impulse, "no matter how much I might want to, I couldn't marry one if it didn't pay."

"Now you are being frank," replied Miss Lesley. "I like people to be frank."

"So do I," said Loveland, "when that doesn't mean being disagreeable, as it generally does from one's relations, especially one's maiden aunts."

"England expects that every aunt will do her duty."

"Luckily you're not my aunt, so please don't do yours if it's unpleasant. But couldn't we be frank—and friends? I should like most awfully to have you for my friend. You could be no end valuable to me, you know, about giving me good advice, if you would."

She laughed. "I dare say. But could you be valuable to me?"

Loveland wished that he might dare to be dangerous; but the idea of having her for a friend, into whose pink shell of an ear he could pour confidences, really attracted him—since her value, not being cash value, could be realised by him in no other way. And, of course, if she would promise to be his friend, it would be caddish to make love to her. He felt very virtuous as he laid down this rule for himself.

"I'll let you study me as much as you like, and put me into your next story."

"As the villain?"

He looked rather blank. His conception for himself was always the part of hero.

"But after all, it's usually baronets who're villains—in stories and plays," she went on. "A Marquis—you are a Marquis, aren't you—may perhaps be a fellow being."

"Please treat me as such, then," said Loveland.

"I will, anyway till further notice. Now you may begin to tell me frank things, and I'll give you frank advice about them, as a friend."

"How I wish you were rich!" exclaimed Loveland, thinking aloud, as he did sometimes.

"How do you know I'm not? Oh, of course Major Cadwallader Hunter found out for you. He would! He's the sort of man who takes a worm's eye view of the world, and of women and wealth. But never mind if I'm not rich."

"I do mind. I shouldn't want you for a friend if you were."

"You wouldn't—oh! Well, now you are being still franker, aren't you?"

"You said you liked people to be frank."

"Ye—es."

"I haven't offended you, have I?"

"No. I'm just getting used to you. It's quite interesting. What do you want my advice about? Other girls, I suppose?"

"It may come to that," Loveland admitted.

"Anyone in particular, at the moment?"

"Well, supposing I were forced to marry money, for the sake of—of—my estates and all that, is there anyone on board you'd recommend?"

"You've two very eligible girls at your table."

"Yes. But hang it all, it's too much of a good thing having them at one's elbow like that, you know. If only it were you, instead——"

"On the principle of having the poor always with one. But for that you'd have to change and sit at mine. We're all poor there, I think. It's the Ineligible's Table, for both sexes. Would you care to come?"

"I'd care to, but I couldn't afford it," said Val. "I must stop where I am and take the goods the gods provide."

"You mean the dining-room steward who arranged the seats."

"What else did Miss Milton say about me?"

"That you were very good-looking—as we're being frank."

"I hope you agreed with her?"

"Oh, yes, I had to. Your looks are so obvious—so much a part of your stock-in-trade, if you don't mind my saying so, it would be silly to deny that the shop windows are well decorated. It was apropos of your marrying that she spoke. I said a handsome man oughtn't to be driven into the obscurity of marriage, by necessity. He ought simply to be supported by the nation, become a sort of public institution, and be the pride of his country; be sent, beautifully got up, to walk in Parks, and dance at balls, and make life pleasant for girls."

"Thank you. Anything else?"

"From Miss Milton or me?"

"From you."

"Nothing more from me. The rest was silence."

"From Miss Milton, then?"

"Let me see. She said it seemed as if you'd bought your eyelashes by the yard, and been frightfully extravagant."

"Wish I could pawn them!"

"If you marry as you intend, you won't need to."

"I say, I'm afraid you're frightfully sarcastic," said Loveland, who had never had an American girl for a friend before, and found that having one kept his hands full. "You think I'm a beast to marry a girl for her money."

"First catch your hare."

"You mean I mayn't get one to take me."

"One never can tell. There have been slips between cup and lip."

"Although I'm poor, I can give my wife a lot of things a woman likes to have."

"Second best things."

"Oh, come! You haven't stopped to think what they are."

"I've stopped to think that love's the best thing—the thing a girl cares most for a man to give her."

"It seems to me that all the girls I know would be pretty well satisfied with the right to walk into a dining-room behind a Duchess, and——"

"Do you? What a lot you've got to learn about girls."

"I don't think I have," said Val. "I think I know most of it."

"About life, then, and about yourself."

"Oh, I know nearly all there is to be known about them."

"You really do need a friend," laughed the girl.

"To keep me from being bored?"

"To keep you from heaps of things."

"Well, go on being my friend, and giving me good advice, please," said Loveland. "There's Miss Coolidge, too. She's a beautiful creature. Are there many other girls in the States as beautiful as she?"

"As beautiful, but few more beautiful."

"Any beautiful ones richer?"

"I'm not up in that kind of statistics. Major Cadwallader Hunter is."

"Yes. But I don't care for the fellow. I'd rather take counsel with you. Do you know Miss Coolidge?"

"No."

"I wish you did."

"Would you like me to use my influence with her?"

"I should like you to use your influence with me to keep me up to the mark. She's rather hard to talk to. So different from you."

"She knows her value. She's 'worth' several millions, as we say in America. (I wish we didn't!) Why should she worry to make herself agreeable? She can get all the attention she wants without bothering. Whereas, we poor girls have to work hard, if we want to be popular in spite of our poverty."

"I suppose there's something in that," said Loveland, too deeply absorbed in his own affairs not to take her in earnest. And the girl would have liked to turn a scornful shoulder upon him, if his voice had not been so nice, and if he had not been so handsome. As it was, she wanted to turn upon herself, because she knew that she was influenced by the nice voice, the clear features, and the black-lashed blue eyes. "He is a perfectly worthless young man," she reflected savagely, yet she did not tell him, as he deserved, that she had reconsidered and would not after all undertake the extra hard work of being his guide, philosopher and friend.

"It will be an experience for me," she thought. And she remembered that she had summed up his character from the first. The revelations he had just made of his inner self ought not now to surprise her.

So the days went on. And the pair remained friends; a state of affairs which took more of Val's time than he should have spared from his real ambitions.

Loveland had tried at intervals to be nice to Miss Coolidge and Miss Milton, and he met other pretty girls to whom he felt obliged to be agreeable, because Major Cadwallader Hunter said that they were heiresses. But it is difficult to be equally nice to five or six charming young women at once and within a comparatively limited area, when you have not made up your mind which of them you want to marry, or whether you will not in the end throw them all over to marry someone else whom you have not yet seen. And it is a particularly difficult task when you would prefer to be nice to someone else whom you have already seen.

Besides, Lord Loveland thought too much of himself to pretend love-making successfully when, so far from being in love, he was considerably bored. Each girl he knew on the ship bored him in her own separate way, except his friend Miss Dearmer, to whom he went frequently for good advice about the others. Perhaps if he had not known her, the other girls, or some of them, would not have bored him. But as it was, they were occasionally tiresome in his eyes when he would have liked to be with Lesley instead; and though Lord Loveland was clever, he was not clever enough to hide his feelings. Sometimes, so sure was he of their forgiveness if he wanted it, he was downright rude; and there is nothing a nice American girl forgives less easily than rudeness which springs from a man's self-conceit.

At first, all the girls had admired Loveland, not only because he had a title, but because he was himself; and some of the younger ones, like Fanny Milton and Madge Beverly, had been inclined to regard him as a starry Paladin. Fanny said he was "so handsome, it almost hurt," and that she "could hardly talk to him for gazing at his Gibson chin." But when the more sophisticated Eva Turner, Elinor Coolidge, Kate Wood and a few others realised that their starry Paladin was impudently inspecting them all with a view to the possible purchase of the most satisfactory, each began to hate him secretly with forty-woman power. Secretly, because there was a kind of glory in him as an asset, and a rivalry for the asset, just as there might be among smaller girls with only one doll—an unlovable but expensive doll—to play with. Not one of the number would sacrifice all right in the doll, and give it up to her companions.

They were worldly, though good-hearted, girls to whom Major Cadwallader Hunter had introduced his prize, and they foresaw that handsome Lord Loveland would be petted, perhaps fought for, in Society, when he had left the little world of the Mauretania for the bigger world of New York. There would be an advantage in having known him first in case he should become the "rage," as he was sure to do, if not too insufferably rude and offensive. Thinking of this, each girl clung to her share of him, and refrained from trampling on the expensive doll, as, for her pride's sake, she ached to do. Nor did Elinor Coolidge and Fanny Milton and the rest speak their true feelings frankly out to one another. Each wished her friends to believe that he was nice to her alone, that his insolence was charmed into lamb-like docility in a duet with her; for in that way self-respect could be maintained and jealousy aroused.

Val was unaware of the hatred, but conscious of the rivalry, and was altogether kept very busy. He forgot to Marconi to his mother that he had sailed on the Mauretania, as Jim Harborough had thought he might forget. As for writing, he had not a moment for any such sedentary employment. Once or twice he did make up his mind to begin a letter to Lady Loveland; but, when he could get a few minutes off duty, it seemed such a waste of time not to go and ask for good advice from Lesley Dearmer, that somehow pen was never put to paper.

And so at last came the day for landing.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Hail to the Land: Goodbye to the Girl

The Mauretania passed the noble statue of Liberty enlightening the world, and Loveland admired her impersonally, but felt that had she been a live millionairess he would not have dared propose to her.

Then, presently, the hugeness of the great city loomed monstrous, mountainous in purple shadow against such a blue sky as Italy and New York know.

A crowd was massed on the dock to welcome the Mauretania and her passengers; and for the first time since he had left England, Val felt a vague homesickness stirring in his breast. Almost everyone else on board seemed to have at least one handkerchief-waving friend, and some had half a dozen, but all the smiling eager faces looking up were strange to his eyes. There was no one for him; and he had a sudden, queer sensation of not being at home in the world. This, in spite of invitations from everybody he had met on the ship—except one: the One who mattered.

Mr. Coolidge and several other fathers and uncles of pretty girls had asked him to make their house his home; but he had taken Jim Harborough's advice to heart, and excused himself warily. His idea was to let New York society pass before his eyes in review, before risking a premature entanglement. To this course he committed himself in cold blood. Since he could not have Lesley Dearmer, all that mattered to him in a girl was decent manners, decent looks, and—many millions.

He should have rejoiced that it was time to land, and have felt keen to set to work upon the business which had brought him across the sea, but he was in no mood to rejoice at anything; and it was Lesley Dearmer's fault.

He had planned a moonlight farewell for the night before, but Lesley thwarted him by talking the whole evening long with a sporting youth, whom Val wrathfully stigmatised in his mind as suffering from motor bicycle face, bridge eye, clutch knee and tennis elbow. Then when she had tired of her flirtation she went to bed.

Next morning it was only as the Mauretania neared her slip that the girl appeared again. Without seeming to notice Loveland she stood leaning her elbows on the rail, not far from him. It occurred to Val that after all it was a matter of no importance to her that their lives were to be lived apart. And the separation was at hand. He had thought of this hour, but now it was here. He was going to lose her. Tomorrow, and all the tomorrows, he would have no sweet, merry, mysterious-eyed friend to advise him and listen half-amused, half in earnest, to his confidences.

Suddenly his heart felt like a large, cold boiled beetroot in his breast. He went and stood behind the girl, dumb with a strange new misery he could not understand, and, as though she had heard the "unerring speech" of his silence, she turned.

At first her beautiful brown eyes flashed a laughing challenge at him, as if they said, "Wouldn't you like to make me think you really care? But I don't think it, and won't. And neither do you care. We've both been playing."

Then, something in his look softened hers. She smiled kindly, though not wholly without guile.

"Aren't you excited?" she asked.

"Why should I be excited?" he grumbled.

"Because—well, you're a soldier, and know what war is like. I've heard that the most exciting thing which can happen is a call to make a sortie in the middle of the night, in the midst of a dream—and on an empty stomach. But I should think the call to a matrimonial sortie——"

"On an empty purse?"

"Yes; when it's a question of selling yourself to fill it."

"I don't mean to sell myself. I shall still belong to myself and to one other. I won't say who that other is, for I've pretty well told you already."

"It's no use pretending not to understand. I know what you want me to think you mean."

"If I never knew before how much I do mean it, I know now, when I've got to say 'goodbye.'"

"You needn't say it."

"You've tried hard to keep me from saying it, haven't you? But look here, Lesley—do look at me. I'm awfully cut up at leaving you."

"You're not to call me Lesley."

"You can't prevent my calling you Lesley to myself."

"You'll soon forget the name."

"Never. I can never forget you—worse luck. The thought of you is going to come between me and—other things."

"The thought must learn better manners. Not to 'butt in,' as we say over here. Oh, it will soon be tamed. You'll have so much to do."

"I hope I shall," said Loveland. "I say, are you going to forget me as soon as we're parted?"

The girl was silent for a moment. Then she laughed. Yet her laugh had not quite the frank lightheartedness which was usually one of its charms. "I shall make a note of you for my next story but one," she answered.

"You're not very kind."

"Are you sure you deserve kindness?"

"I'm sure I want it—from you."

"How you have always got what you wanted in your life, haven't you—one way or another?"

"Life wouldn't be worth living if one didn't."

"Oh, it's not much good saying to you that that's a selfish way of looking at life. But you've never had any lessons, and I suppose you never will have. You'll go on getting what you want, and taking it for granted that you ought to get it, till the end."

"I hope so, sincerely," said Val, without shame. "But I shan't get one of the things I want most, unless you promise to write to me."

She shook her head. "I can't promise that. I wouldn't if I could. As for getting your news, I shall read it in the papers, which are sure to chronicle all Lord Loveland does and says, and a lot he doesn't do or say. The Louisville papers will have things about you, copied from New York, in the Sunday editions. Yes, I shall be able to read about you every Sunday—lots of things you wouldn't tell in letters if I let you write. I shall see rumours of your engagement, then an announcement. I wonder if it will be the survival of the prettiest; Miss Coolidge—or if you'll be knocked down—on your knees—to a higher bid?"

"You're not letting me get much pleasure out of my last moments with you," he complained, his blue eyes really pathetic. "Do you despise me, after all?"

She looked up at him. "Only one side of you," she answered, a little sadly. "But—you're rather like the moon. We see only one of her sides. The other we have to take on faith. Perhaps it's silly of me, yet sometimes—in some moods—I do take your other side on faith."

"What is there,—on that side?" he asked, eagerly.

"I don't know. And I'm sure you don't. You probably never will. For the light shines so brightly on the one turned towards the world. Now it must be 'goodbye.' There's my dear little aunt—who's been on deck ever since we passed Governor's Island—looking for me."

"Are these to be our last words together, then?" Val had a sickening pang. He had not known it was going to be as bad as this. And it wouldn't have been so bad, if she had seemed to care more.

"Yes, they must be the last, unless just a snippy 'goodbye, very pleased to have met you,' as we leave the ship. I wish you the best luck. Shall I say 'Thine own wish, wish I thee'?" She spoke in a hard, bright tone, just poising like a bird on the wing, before flitting to her aunt.

"Don't forget me. Think of me sometimes," Loveland implored, as he wrung the little hand she held out. And perhaps never in his life had there been so much true feeling in his voice.

"I will think of you sometimes," she said, as if mechanically repeating the words.

"Try and think the best of me."

"Yes. I'll try to do that, too. Goodbye."

But he would not let her hand go. It seemed to him that he could not—although he knew he must. It was all he could do to keep back a plea that she would love him, that she would marry him, even though the crumbling walls of Loveland Castle fell. But instead he stammered, "Am I never to see you again? Can't you stop in New York for a few days, and let me call on—on you and your aunt—just to break the blow of parting?"

"No, we can't stop," she said. "We've been away from home too long already. We have lots to do. You know I work for my living."

"Those stories! Yes. But couldn't you write them in New York?"

"No, I couldn't, indeed. Aunt Barbara and I start for Louisville this afternoon. We live not far away."

"Mayn't I go with you to the train?"

"What! desert valuable friends whom it's your duty to cultivate—if you're to have flowers in the garden of your future?"

"I'd desert anyone or anything for you."

"Thank you. I believe you really mean that—this minute."

"I——"

"No. Don't protest. Sufficient for the minute is the meaning thereof. I must go—I want to go—while you still mean it all. And I'd rather not see you again, because I'd like to keep the memory of you as you look and are in this minute—nothing less. It will seem afterwards to justify our temporary partnership, in case I ever ask myself—Why?"

And before he could answer she was gone.

He dared not follow, and instantly lost sight of her in the crowd that poured to the rail to greet the waiting crowd below. Afterwards, on the dock, he saw her again, but only at a distance, for her aunt's luggage had been marked "D," that it might chaperon Miss Dearmer's, and enable the two ladies to keep each other company during the tedious time of waiting.

From the far off stall under the big letter "L," Loveland gazed sadly at the back of his lost friend's head, her face, either by accident or design, being turned from him. His boxes were long in coming, and as it happened that none of his ship-acquaintances were "L's," he had no one to talk to, nothing pleasanter to do than look at Miss Dearmer's back and gradually lose hope of her relenting.

She had brought a little camp-stool for her aunt, and that lady sat facing Loveland, her eyes so destitute of interest when now and then they strayed in his direction, that he began to believe her niece had never mentioned his existence. More than once he had pictured Lesley describing her aunt's distinguished namesake; had fancied Mrs. Loveland asking questions; and wished that he might hear the answers. The lady's indifference was not flattering to his self-esteem; but Mrs. Loveland did not look a woman to claim a relation because he was a peer.

Lesley's aunt was a little woman with dove-grey hair, folded like dove's wings that slanted softly down her forehead, covering her ears. Hers was a gentle face, with eyes that gazed kindly, and somehow impersonally, out upon the world. She had the air which many American mothers wear, of having contentedly stepped aside from the fore-front of life in favour of a younger generation, and of having lost interest in herself as a separate entity.

Lesley and Mrs. Loveland all got their luggage dumped down under letter "D," before a single "L" box had appeared. Then, when Val's did come, and the property of other impatient "L's" at the same time, the outside world was lost to view. Loveland got hold of a good-natured Custom House man, who, considering the indubitable fact that he was dealing with a British subject, and believing the "Britisher's" statement that he was merely on a visit to America, made no unnecessary trouble. He was in a hurry, like everybody else, and did little more than casually open the leather portmanteaux, the cabin trunk, the hat box, and the fitted suit-case glittering with coronets, which constituted Lord Loveland's luggage.

Very few minutes were wasted in the examination, though Americans all around were suffering severely. Nevertheless, when his keys were in his hand again, and Val was ready to separate himself and his belongings from the seething mass of anxious "L's," Miss Dearmer and her aunt had vanished off the face of the dock.

CHAPTER NINE

Foxham Redivivus

Loveland tried to put thoughts of the girl out of his head as he drove through the exciting streets of New York, which seemed to him colourful and strange as a vast flower-garden, sown regardlessly. But, despite the rush and roar of "elevated trains" above his head, the swift whirr of electric trams to left, to right, of him on a level, and the bizarre effect of the "sky-scrapers," which turned long thoroughfares into shadowed valleys, he could not throw open his mind to the rush of new impressions. This brilliant New York made him feel after all a person of comparatively small importance. He began to repent having refused invitations, for instead of bumping dolefully to a hotel, in a cab which was the least modern thing New York had shown him, he might now be spinning uptown in any one of half a dozen hospitable ten-thousand-dollar motor cars. In his isolation he regretted the Coolidges, and even Cadwallader Hunter who had pressed him to spend a day or two at his flat; however, he was consoled by the reflection that he had decided wisely, and that wisdom would be its own reward. It was better not to lend himself to anyone until he had seen everyone, and decided to whom he would permanently belong.

When the bear had refused the hospitality of its leader's cage, Cadwallader Hunter had suggested a quiet new hotel, uptown and near his apartment. But the bear did not know that it was a bear, and had tired of dictation. Loveland had heard of the Waldorf-Astoria, and he had not heard of the quiet new hotel. Men he knew, who ran over to New York on such errands as his own, stopped at the Waldorf-Astoria, or Holland House, or the Plaza, and Val, who believed that the best was only just good enough, would not risk hiding his light under a bushel. True, he had very little money, but he had plenty of invitations and was certain to have more. A couple of days at the most expensive hotel could not break him; and Jim and Betty Harborough's millionaire friends would probably expect him to be conspicuous. Now was the tide in his affairs which must be taken at the flood, and he could not afford to let his future relations-in-law (whoever they might be) learn to despise him.

Loveland's intention had been to ask for a small room, high in situation and low in price; but once inside the immense, red-brown building, which looked vast enough to hold half New York, pride tied his tongue. Pretty girls, beautifully dressed, and prosperous-looking men, with facial expressions as supercilious as his own, were standing within earshot; and Loveland could not resist satisfying an impulse of boyish vanity. He announced to a superior gentleman at a desk that he wanted a good room with a bath. His charming voice and "English accent" attracted the Americans near him, and under his mask of indifference Loveland was aware of the attention he excited.

The superior gentleman thought for a moment and consulted a book. Then he said that he had no single rooms with baths disengaged at present, but that there was a suite consisting of bedroom, bath and parlour; just one suite, and that probably would be gone in another minute.

The hint of rivalry decided Loveland. "Very well. I will take it," he said. "Here's my card, if you wish to know to whom you are letting your rooms," he went on haughtily, in response to a sharp glance from shrewd, experienced eyes. And the hotel clerk read aloud, "Marquis of Loveland."

At this, everyone who had not been staring at the handsome, arrogant young Englishman, began to stare, and Loveland was not displeased.

"My luggage will be here soon, I hope," he said, showing several metal discs about which his ideas were rather vague. The clerk answered civilly that the trunks ought to arrive in half an hour or so, and a smart youth in livery was told off to show Lord Loveland his rooms.

They were very luxurious rooms, almost too luxurious, and Loveland experienced a faint qualm as it occurred to him that he had neglected to ask the price. "But they can't come to more than five or six pounds a day at the worst," he thought, hopefully.

He had brought his suit-case in the cab, and as the letters of introduction were in a little portable writing-desk contained among the fittings, he got out the packet to read over the addresses. All the friends to whom Jim and Betty were commending him lived in New York, and Cadwallader Hunter had said that most New Yorkers were at home in November. Loveland was just deciding that the letters had better reach their destination before night, when his baggage appeared, looking not much the worse for wear.

Now was the moment when the inestimable Foxham would be really missed. On shipboard there had been little to unpack; but the contents of the portmanteaux must have been rudely stirred on the dock, and ought immediately to be rescued by an expert. Loveland touched an electric bell in his bedroom, demanded of an unexpectedly responsive telephone that the hotel should produce a valet; and criticised the product adversely when it came.

Luncheon time was near, and Val was hungry, but he would not leave wardrobe and jewellery to the discretion of a strange servant. In a mood swinging towards impatience, he sat down on a cushioned sofa to watch the valet's proceedings.

The larger of the two noble portmanteaux was opened; the neat square of gold-braided and coronetted brown velvet, with which Foxham always covered the contents of each box, was removed; and a pile of clothing was deftly excavated.

Loveland's face changed from attention to surprise, then to bewilderment. "By Jove!" he exclaimed, "those don't look like my things." Then springing up alertly he began to toss over the pile as the hotel valet deposited it upon the bed, to toss it over as a haymaker tosses hay. But, in the midst, he drew back his hand as if he had inadvertently touched pitch. "Jove!" he stammered again.

"Wrong luggage, sir?" ventured the servant.

Loveland did not reply. He did not even hear, for his thoughts had taken a trip of record quickness across the sea, and were already in London, chasing a mystery. But, if the valet had stopped to think, an answer would have been unnecessary. The keys fitted the portmanteaux; and there were the big initials and the small coronets which distinguished Lord Loveland's property from the vulgar trunks of the common herd.

Had Foxham gone mad? For the moment Loveland could think of no other explanation. The portmanteau was filled with discarded garments, many of which Loveland had given to Foxham at parting. Other things were there, too, which Val dimly remembered having actually seen on the person of Foxham, and it was from the touch of these contaminated remnants that he recoiled in disgust.

"Open the other portmanteau," he directed, flushed now, and anxious-eyed.

The hotel servant obeyed. Another neat square of brown velvet was whisked away, and piles of shirts were revealed; but, save for a deceitful top layer, they were not Loveland's shirts. They might have been bought ready-made in the Edgware Road; probably had been—by Foxham. There was underclothing also; but not the pale pink, blue and heliotrope silk variety affected by Foxham's master.

"Now the hat box," Loveland went on, almost sure that he was talking in his sleep. For it was unbelievable that he would not soon wake up to find that this was a bad dream.

There were hats in the hat box; Foxham's hats, perhaps; certainly not Lord Loveland's. And in the boot box which came next were boots, but boots which had lost all claim to self-respect; boots which even Foxham would have found it difficult to give away.

Only the Custom House official's good nature and haste, and Loveland's complete absence of mind on the dock had delayed discovery until this moment, but now that the secret was out, there seemed nothing to do, if not to rage helplessly.

Loveland spluttered a few colourful words, but was still too bewildered by the catastrophe to become volcanic. The eruption would follow later.

"What shall I do with the things, sir?" the valet wanted to know.

"Do with them?" repeated Loveland, exasperated by the creature's calmness. "Pitch 'em into the fire—get rid of them anyhow, out of my sight, and be quick about it. I've been robbed, by my own man."

Loveland seemed to hear these words spoken by an unknown voice, as if they had been uttered by a stranger, and instantly he accepted them as the solution of the mystery.

That was it! Foxham had robbed him. Foxham had not gone mad. Foxham was simply a scoundrel.

There was too much method in the planning of this trick, even for madness.

The careful arrangement of the cabin luggage, with all the right things in the right places, except for the jewel-case containing tie pins, sleeve links and shirt studs, which for five days Loveland had believed to have been stowed away somewhere else by mistake. The packing of the portmanteaux and boxes with a nice judgment as to their proper weight and the neatness of top layers; all this was too well thought out to be the work of a lunatic.

No wonder Foxham had not asked for wages in arrear. No wonder he suddenly developed a defunct grandfather with an eccentric will. From the moment he heard of the proposed trip to America, he must have been quietly planning this coup, a coup worth making for the sake of the bran new wardrobe, to say nothing of the jewellery. And hot with rage, Loveland ran over in his mind the contents of that missing jewel-box. The pearl studs which Lady Kitty Manning had given him on his last birthday—each one of the three worth fifty pounds, if it was worth a shilling. How he wished he had sold the things, as he had been tempted to do, and would have done, if they had not been the gift of a pretty woman! The diamond and enamel sleeve-links, too, and the sapphire buttons; a hundred pounds more in Foxham's pocket. Then the cravat pins, in two long rows on a white velvet background: Loveland could see them, as he had seen them last—a cherished collection representing not only so many golden sovereigns, but so many queens of beauty, the charming givers.

What a rogue to send his master off to a strange country, stripped practically naked; and how the master longed to have the rogue within kicking distance, instead of safe across the sea.

Forgotten faults of Foxham's flashed back into his memory; small slynesses winked at, or condoned; rumoured "airs" assumed in the servants' hall at country houses; fibs found out and overlooked, because no other valet had Foxham's skill and resourcefulness. Still—who would have expected such depravity?

If this blow had fallen on some other man, Loveland would have laughed, and chaffed him; but he was far from seeing his own predicament as a laughing matter. He was like a knight of old who, having journeyed to a far land to joust for a great prize, finds himself robbed of his armour. How was he to fight on the tilting ground of society, and bear away a millionairess, when his sole possessions consisted of what he stood up in, and the contents of a suit-case and a cabin trunk?

Luckily Foxham had not been able to annex his master's letter of credit; but Val had uses for the hundred and fifty pounds other than buying a new outfit. How he wished now that he had not played Bridge quite so often on board ship, emptying his pockets of spare cash. The scrape he was in was as hard to win out of as a black London fog; and while groping for light, a mild question from the hotel valet did not sweeten his temper.

"Am I really to carry all these things away, sir?"

"Oh, go to the devil and take them with you!"

The servant—lest he remember that he had been born a man, and retaliate—bolted towards safety, with a leaning tower of Foxham's garments on his arm. It was nobody's business how he meant to dispose of them; and a second later he would have passed the danger line, had not a page boy selected that identical instant to knock at Lord Loveland's door.

Man and youth collided. The top-heavy pile of clothing crumbled into ruin, Foxham's loathed shirts and waistcoats blotting out the threshold. What the valet said, long habits of servitude rendered inaudible, but what Loveland said might have been heard at the end of the corridor. And there were listeners nearer: Major Cadwallader Hunter and a companion who "represented" one of New York's leading newspapers.

CHAPTER TEN

The Valley of Disappointment

Major Cadwallader Hunter had been somewhat doubtful of his wisdom in paying this uninvited call. He had hinted that he might drop in at the Waldorf to see how Lord Loveland got on, and had not been encouraged to do so. But Tony Kidd of "New York Light" was a pretty good excuse for persevering, and he certainly had been badly in want of an excuse.

Having cast himself for the part of bear-leader it was imperative that Society should know who led the bear, whether the bear recognised his position or not.

Had he, like Loveland, been merely a guest in America, he would have left the ship's dock when Lord Loveland left, and have been able to show all whom it concerned at the Waldorf-Astoria that Loveland was his property. But he was subjected by the dreaded Custom House officials to treatment very different from that meted out to the Englishman, being baited and bullied as if he were a bear instead of a bear-leader.

The detention, however, proved a blessing in disguise, for it gave him Mr. Anthony Kidd of "Light." The journalist, sent down by his paper to meet the Mauretania, had just exhausted the available supply of home-coming millionaires when he spied Major Cadwallader Hunter, and carelessly culled him by the way, as worth a short paragraph at the bottom of a column.

Cadwallader Hunter was glad of a paragraph anywhere, but thought he saw his way to one higher up, perhaps even with a headline. So he happened to mention "a connection of his," the Marquis of Loveland who had been on board, though, for reasons, the noble name did not appear on the passenger list, and Mr. Kidd took the bait. Loveland was described by his alleged cousin as a "dear boy," so handsome, so clever; one of the oldest peerages in England, et cetera, et cetera; in the Grenadier Guards, don't you know, and all that sort of thing. Had gone on ahead to secure rooms at the Waldorf-Astoria, though invitations had been showered upon him by the best people on board ship. As soon as he could escape with life and luggage Cadwallader Hunter intended to pay a friendly call and inspect Lord Loveland's new quarters.

Of course Mr. Kidd wanted to call, too, and get a "story" for his paper. But at this suggestion the bear-leader shook his head. Charming fellow as Loveland was when you knew him, he was rather a difficult man to approach, and had some ridiculous prejudice against American pressmen. Certainly, unless influence were brought to bear, he would refuse to see Mr. Kidd; but Cadwallader Hunter would like to do "Light" a good turn, and give the paper a chance for a "scoop." He would take Mr. Kidd under his wing, and use his persuasive powers to obtain some sort of an interview.

Perhaps there was more confidence in his manner than in his mind as he made this offer, for the bear's leader had already seen the bear's claws; but the risk was worth running. And when, arrived at the Waldorf, he had talked for a few minutes with pleasant condescension to a hotel clerk, his self-esteem had so risen that he no longer dreaded a cold reception.

Nor did he receive one. His welcome was, on the contrary, far warmer than he had expected, and the hot blast of Loveland's wrath swept him back a step or two, so that he trod hard upon Tony Kidd's most pampered toe.

A difficult young man to approach, indeed!

The representative of "New York Light" was a brilliant journalist with a keen sense of humour, and a headline jumped into his head as Cadwallader Hunter stamped upon his toe. "A Difficult Young Man to Approach." He thought he saw his way to something rather choice for tomorrow morning's "Light."

Somehow, between valet and page, the wild litter of shirts, trousers, boots, and other horrors reminiscent of Foxham, was re-built into a tower more leaning than before. Then, while the valet scuttled away with his trailing, sliding load, the page remained behind and courageously announced the visitors.

Perhaps if Foxham had spared him a few of his favourite tie pins, or if the blow of his loss had not caught him on an empty stomach, Loveland might have seen the humour of the situation as Tony Kidd saw it. But everything was against him in a black world; and his late shipmate's intrusion with a stranger was the one last drop in a bitter cup which he refused to swallow.

Never had Cadwallader Hunter's handsome bear looked less handsome or more dangerous than he looked as he stood blocking the way to his den, at bay against fate and against his leader.

"My dear fellow, what has happened to upset you?" exclaimed Cadwallader Hunter, warned by Loveland's expression that the only hope lay in getting the first word.

"Upset me?" echoed Val, glaring blue fire so vindictively that Kidd expected his introducer to be the next one "upset." "My d——d valet has stolen all my clothes, and made me a present of his own, that's all."

"How shocking!" sympathised Cadwallader Hunter.

"Well, yes, it is rather a shock," returned Loveland drily, "and if you don't mind, I think I'd better ask you to let me get over it alone."

"Oh! certainly, I quite understand," purred the banished courtier. But Kidd was making mental notes, and Cadwallader Hunter strove to retain his reputation as a valued cousin. "Just a minute or two, dear boy, and we'll take ourselves off. This is Mr. Kidd, from one of our most important papers——"

"Happy to see him another time," snapped Loveland. "Just now I'm in no temper to entertain strangers."

"But at least," Cadwallader Hunter protested, "you mustn't look on me as a stranger, my dear fellow—and if there's anything I can do——"

"My dear fellow," Loveland flung back at him, in angry mimicry, "if you keep on, I'm more likely to look on you as a bore. The one thing you can do for me is to go, and take your newspaper friend with you. Good morning."

And the bear shot back into his den, banging the door.

"'The one thing you can do for me is to go, and take your newspaper friend with you'"

"The British Lion before his midday meal," remarked the representative of "New York Light." "Another minute, and he'd have snatched a free lunch—Kidd with Hunter Sauce! But serve me up on toast if he hasn't got sauce enough of his own."

"He comes of a hot-tempered family." Cadwallader Hunter explained his English relative.

"I should say they'd been hot ever since William the Conqueror," commented Mr. Kidd. "Good family to keep away from when you haven't got your gun. I forgot mine this morning."

But he had not forgotten his stylographic pen.

The moment that the door had slammed, Loveland's ears tingled with the consciousness that not only had he been guilty of a very rude act, but a particularly stupid one.

He had never liked Cadwallader Hunter, had lately grown tired and sick of him, and detested him cordially now, for a peppery second or two; yet all this did not do away with noblesse oblige. Nothing could excuse forgetfulness of one's obligation, the obligation to be a gentleman; and Loveland was irritably aware that he had forgotten it.

He reminded himself that a great liberty had been taken with him at an inopportune moment, that he was not used to having liberties taken with him at the best of times, and that Cadwallader Hunter deserved all he had got for coming up to him uninvited, with a stranger—a newspaper man—in tow. Still, Val was not happy, and if he had not been too stubbornly proud to yield to his first impulse, he would have flung open the door and run after his visitors with apologies. But no; he would not do it. A bad precedent to make with a person like Cadwallader Hunter, he said, excusing himself. The Major would take advantage of it; and as for the journalist, he—Lord Loveland—stood on purple heights so lofty that he need fear no spiteful yapping of dogs on lower levels. Nothing could drag him down to their depths; and as his idea was that American newspaper men were no slaves to truth, he told himself that this one would probably have lied in any case.

With such thoughts vaguely stirring in his mind, and assured that Cadwallader Hunter's past civility had been entirely for what he could get, Loveland tried to re-establish friendly relations with his own conscience; but the uneasy pricking would not stop. It drove him up and down, in and out of one beautifully furnished room to another, in irrepressible restlessness, and a presentiment of worse things to come than he had yet suffered.

He had meant, when his unpacking was done, to dress and lunch in the restaurant, whose fame had reached even the dining-room of the Guard's Club. But that was before the Nightmare. Now he did not want to look at his fellow-beings or be looked at; and he pressed his electric bell viciously to order luncheon sent up.

It came presently, and would have been delicious to a man without a grievance, but Loveland's grievance was so gigantic that it had crowded out his appetite; and scarcely knowing what he ate, he went through course after course, brooding on his wrongs, and pondering the chances of revenge.

Useless to waste money in cabling instructions for Foxham's arrest, he reflected. The wretch, who had planned everything so well, would long ago have taken himself out of harm's way, and it would be like setting Scotland Yard to look for a very small, rusty needle in a haystack as big as England and the Continent, to expect the thievish valet to be found. Months ago, in an expansive moment, when Loveland had nothing better to do than listen while his boots were being laced, Foxham had confessed that at one time he had been an actor, "in a humble way." His speciality had been quick disguises, "lightning changes"; and he had been successful in a "turn" done at provincial music halls. Loveland could imagine Foxham disguising himself very well, and being almost as good an actor as he had been a valet. He was perhaps masquerading now as a Salvation Army Preacher, or a Beauty Specialist; or setting up as a grocer on the money got by the betrayal of his master.

No, Loveland decided, he need not hope to punish Foxham. His time might be better employed in planning the reconstruction of his own wardrobe.

A man, even a Marquis, can live without tie pins or a change of shirt studs, but he cannot live without such clothes as Society expects of him. Loveland thought with almost passionate regret of his tailor's achievements, lost to him for ever, and with anxiety of the difficult matter it would be to replace them.

The hundred and fifty pounds represented by his letter of credit could not be spared for American tailors and bootmakers; that went without saying. These persons would have to trust him. But—were American tailors and bootmakers of a trusting nature? Loveland had somehow got the impression that they were not, and that even if you were a Duke—much less a Marquis—and flaunted a copy of Burke under their noses, they would still want some native millionaire to guarantee them against loss.

Cadwallader Hunter was not a millionaire (this was the one damaging statement he had voluntarily made against himself) but he knew millionaires and was known by them; and with a pang of selfish regret, even sharper than his first remorse, Loveland repented his wastefulness in throwing away such a friend. If he had not slammed the door almost upon Cadwallader Hunter's high, thin nose, he might now have summoned him by telephone, and have got him to trot about introducing the Marquis of Loveland to the best tailors in New York. Of course, the Major would not accept the snub as final: he was not that sort of person; but it was beneath the Loveland dignity to insult a man and then ask a favour of him. The only thing for Val to do was to wait until he had collected other friends more solid, more valuable, than Cadwallader Hunter, and as soon as possible tell the tale of his misfortunes. Of course, everybody would be delighted to help Lord Loveland; and, by the way, there was Mr. Coolidge who could be approached, if worst came to worst.

But worst had not yet come to worst, and as Val's spirits rose with a mingling of good food and bright hopes, he decided against Coolidge as a refuge for the present. In spite of all, he would stick to his guns and not forgather further with the Mauretania people until he had seen what Harborough's letters produced. He could get on for a day or two, and meanwhile there were things to do.

When he had been cheered by luncheon, and soothed by cigarettes, he sent for a motor taxi-cab. The afternoon was still young, and so full of sparkle and gayety that life seemed worth living after all; therefore Lord Loveland had begun to value himself almost as highly as ever, by the time his smart little automobile pulled up in front of the bank.

It was a stately bank, well worthy of its London connection; and he handed in his visiting card and letter of credit, with the air of one entitled to receive unlimited sums. The cashier, however, having looked at him, the card, and the letter, did not appear to be impressed. Instead of replying in words to Loveland's demand for twenty pounds, he walked away with the letter of credit in his hand, and vanished behind a swing door. Loveland thought that he had probably gone to fetch the manager, who would perhaps desire to see in person a titled client of some importance. But after a short delay the cashier returned alone, and having strolled back to his place behind the grating, there stood silent for a moment.

"I'm rather in a hurry," said Loveland. "I suppose there'll be no red tape about my getting twenty pounds? I want it this afternoon."

The cashier smiled a dry smile, and his voice sounded dry as he answered. "I don't know about the red tape, but I'm sorry to tell you we have no instructions from London to pay."

"What?" cried Val, reddening with annoyance. Several people writing cheques or waiting for money at the counter, looked up and continued to look. "You have no instructions?"

"No instructions to pay," repeated the cashier, putting on the last word an emphasis which sounded offensive to Loveland's ears, though he hastily assured himself that it could not possibly have any such meaning.

"This is very inconvenient," said Val, to whom Bridge and tips on shipboard had left exactly seventeen shillings, three pence halfpenny.

"I'm sorry for that," remarked the cashier, still more formally, more unsympathetically, and—one might almost have said—more disrespectfully, than before.

Loveland, though inclined to storm, reflected a moment. He had intended to sail on the Baltic, which was due to leave English shores only yesterday, and might not arrive at New York for seven or eight days. He had not given anyone notice—not even his mother—that he had changed his intention, and very likely the London papers had paragraphed him as a passenger on the Baltic's next trip. Nevertheless, he could not quite understand how that fact excused his London bank's delay in instructing their New York correspondents. They had had plenty of time to arrange his affairs before his sudden departure in the Mauretania, and by not doing so they were likely to make him a great deal of unnecessary trouble.

Again he thought of Cadwallader Hunter. In this instance, too, the man might have been useful.

"Well, I don't see why I should be made to suffer because the London and Southern Bank puts off till tomorrow what it ought to have done a week ago," said Loveland, beginning to be arrogant, though looking boyish, with his flushed face, and his white scar glimmering on its background of clear, ruddy-brown. "I must have some money, you know."

The cashier did not reply to this challenge, and his eyes expressed no interested consideration of the matter.

"You had better see your manager and explain the circumstances," pursued Val.

"It would be useless. We could not pay without instructions."

"I daresay I might manage with ten pounds till you could get an answer, if you choose to be so ridiculously over-cautious," Loveland insisted, loftily. "But in that case you must cable at once."

"You will no doubt be willing to pay for the message in advance?" suggested the cashier.

"Certainly not," said Val, no longer trying to keep his temper under control. "You've seen my card. Isn't that enough for you?"

"Business is business," quoted the bank employé, still unruffled, still blind to Lord Loveland's importance, cold to his necessities.

"And decency's decency," stormed Val, careless now who looked or listened, and in a mood to wreck all American institutions.

"Yes, it's as well never to forget that," the cashier hinted, significantly. "Sorry we cannot accommodate you at present."

"I'm hanged if you ever get the chance again," retorted Val, snatching his letter of credit from the counter. "I shall myself send a cable to the London and Southern which will make you repent your pig-headedness." And with this ultimatum he strode to the door, as if on the way to sign a death-warrant.

"By his looks, that will be an expensive cable, and make the wire mighty hot," Val heard a man chuckle as he passed, and there was a spatter of laughter, which (for his eyes) painted the opposite sky-scrapers bright scarlet.

"Beastly America! Beastly Americans!" he muttered. "I suppose this is their way of resenting the existence of aristocracy."

Lord Loveland had a good deal to learn yet about America—and also about that important member of the aristocracy, himself.

As he returned to his motor cab, which had been "taxing" away violently since he left it, he wondered if he would have enough money to pay for it. But, what if he hadn't? He could tip the chauffeur, and the hotel would do the rest. Also the hotel would put down the cash for a dozen cablegrams. Oh, the sting of these pin-pricks would last no longer than the poison of mosquito-bites! Once Jim Harborough's friends began to rally round him, and vie among each other for his society, as the Mauretanians had done, New York would be his to play with. Patience, then, and shuffle the cards. As he had heard someone say on shipboard, "Faint heart never won a game of poker."

It was thus he smoothed away the sulky frown which suited neither his face, nor the gentle Indian-summer sunshine. Then, trying to forget the first snub man had ever dared to deal him, he flashed here and there in his motor cab, making a house to house distribution of Jim's envelopes and his own visiting cards, according to home custom when armed with letters of introduction.

The sky flamed with sunset banners—Spanish colours—long before he had finished his round and was ready to return to the Waldorf. There, his idea of a suitable present to the chauffeur left him with the American equivalent of eight or nine shillings in his pocket. But, as he had expected, the hotel paid for his afternoon's motoring. So cheerfully did it pay that he sent off an unnecessarily long and extremely frank cablegram to his London bankers which they ought to receive on opening their doors next morning. He thought that it would rather wake them up, and that in consequence of their response to New York—certain to flash immediately along the wires—he would receive an apology from the rude wretch who had insulted him that afternoon. But nothing would induce him to forget or forgive. He had informed the London bankers that his business must be diverted into another channel, which they were invited to suggest.

When Loveland found himself alone again in his luxurious suite of rooms, with the November night coming on, and no amusement on hand (unless he chose to stare down from his high windows at the blaze of astonishing jewels which festooned the immense blue dusk with light and colour) he half wished once more that he had not been so cautious in the matter of accepting invitations. After all, it wouldn't have compromised his future, if he had gone to dine with the Coolidges, or Spanish-eyed, flirtatious Mrs. Milton and her gentle little daughter Fanny. A dinner with them—or even with the dullest people who had invited him—would have been preferable to an undiluted dose of his own society on this first night in a strange land. However, it was too late to reconsider now with dignity (though he was childishly confident that any of his American acquaintances would have been entranced, had he suddenly changed his mind) and the next best thing to dining with friends would be to watch the coming and going of gay New York in the Waldorf-Astoria restaurant.

He dressed and went down about eight, therefore, looking forward to the novelty of the unknown.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Discovery of Lord Loveland by America

It was a brilliant scene into the midst of which Loveland plunged.

Society begins to dine earlier in New York than in London; therefore at eight o'clock dinner was in full swing. There was scarcely an empty table; and many of the women being in hats and semi-evening dress, the red and gold restaurant suggested to the newcomer a living picture of Paris.

He had had the forethought to telephone down and order a table to be kept for him, and informing an interrogative waiter that he was Lord Loveland he learned that his place would be found at the far end of the room.

It looked a very far end indeed, gazing across an intervening sea of flowerlike hats, charming faces, and jewelled necks that glimmered white under film of lace and tulle; but Loveland was not shy. Among all the men who protected the charming faces, his sweeping, faintly supercilious glance did not show him one whose physical advantages he need envy. He rather enjoyed his progress, winding on and on along narrow paths between rose-burdened tables, with lovely eyes lifting to his as he passed by. He wondered if any pair of those eyes was destined to look down his own table at Loveland Castle some day. Well, they should be beautiful eyes to deserve the honour! the thought slipped vaguely through his head, and then his own eyes brightened with the light of recognition.

There, at a large table decorated with white and purple violets, sat Elinor Coolidge, her father, Mrs. Milton and Fanny, and two men whom Loveland had never seen before. Standing, and bending slightly down to talk in a confidential tone with one of these men, was Major Cadwallader Hunter.

His back was turned towards Loveland, who recognised him instantly, however, by the set of his high, military shoulders, and the bald spot on his head which Lesley Dearmer had likened to the shape of Italy on the map. He seemed to listen with deep interest to what one of the seated men was saying, and then to chime in eagerly with some addition of his own. Everyone at the table was absorbed in the conversation between these two, and as Loveland came nearer, he saw that the expression of all the faces, including those of the three ladies, was so grave as to appear out of keeping with the liveliness of the scene. Suddenly, however, Loveland caught Fanny Milton's eye. She started, and blushed scarlet. The slight, involuntary movement she made drew Miss Coolidge's attention: and Elinor, seeing the direction in which Fanny's eyes were turned, sent a glance that way.

Loveland, within bowing distance now, met the glance, and returned it, smiling. He was annoyed that Cadwallader Hunter should be with the party, even though evidently not of it. Yet, after all, he said to himself, perhaps it was as well. He did not mean to apologise to Cadwallader Hunter, for he thought his own rudeness more or less justified by the liberty the other had taken; but he had already made up his mind that, the next time he met the man, he would act as if nothing disagreeable had happened. As to Cadwallader Hunter's readiness to snatch at the olive branch, Loveland had not the slightest doubt of it. He thought he had only to hold out a hand for the Major to kiss it, grovelling.

Elinor Coolidge did not blush at the sight of Lord Loveland as Fanny Milton did, but her beautiful face changed curiously. Its cameo-clear lines hardened, her lips were pressed together, and her large eyes narrowed, gleaming like topazes between their dark lashes, as the lights from the shaded candles on the table lighted sparks in their yellow-brown depths.

The thought flashed into Loveland's head that the quick change in her face meant jealousy of Fanny Milton. He had noticed more than once on shipboard that she had seemed jealous of Fanny, and now that deep blush of the younger girl's at sight of him, had probably vexed her. He could not attribute the hardening of the beautiful features to any other cause, and as of the two it was wise to prefer Elinor and her millions to Fanny and her thousands, he let his first look, his first words, be for the Coolidges, father and daughter.

"How d'you do?" he asked, pausing at the table.

Instead of answering, or putting out her hand to him as he expected, Elinor almost convulsively grasped the sticks of a delicate little fan which lay beside her plate. She shot a topaz glance at one of the two new men, then let her eyes under raised brows seek and hold her father's.

Lord Loveland was at once surprised and puzzled by this extraordinary reception. "Can Cadwallader Hunter have told them all some lie to set them against me?" he asked himself. But it was no more than a passing thought. It was incredible that Miss Coolidge should believe anything against him.

At the sound of Loveland's voice, Cadwallader Hunter straightened up in haste and turned round, looking suddenly stiff and wicked as a frozen snake.

He stared into Loveland's eyes, his own like grey glass; and an unpromising smile depressed the corners of his thin lips.

"Oh, that's it, is it?" thought Val, with the carelessness of a man used to dominating situations. "He's afraid I'm not going to speak to him, and he daren't speak first for fear of being snubbed again. Well"—and Val felt pleasantly magnanimous—"I'll give him a lead. How are you?" he asked, with the patronising tone his voice unconsciously took when he spoke to this man.

Then he could hardly believe his eyes which told him that Cadwallader Hunter had turned a contemptuous shoulder upon him, darting disgust in a venomous glance.

"This is the—person we were speaking of," he said to the dark, clean-shaven man towards whom he had been bending (he seemed always to be bending towards someone) when Loveland came up. "Shall we have him turned out?"

Mr. Coolidge half rose in his seat, losing his characteristic stolidity. "No, no," he returned, in a low, decided voice, "there must be no scene here, for the ladies' sake. Keep quiet, everybody."

"You're right, Coolidge," returned the dark, smooth-faced man.

Then the latter fixed his eyes on Loveland with a stare under a frown; and the other new man stared also; but the three women looked away, trying in vain to think of something easy and natural to say to each other. A slight, nervous twitching which occasionally disturbed the tranquillity of Mrs. Milton's camellia-white face became visible; Elinor Coolidge was pale and motionless; and Fanny's eyes swam in a lake of tears which she struggled to keep from over-flowing.

Again it struck Loveland that he was living in a dream; the gorgeous room; the crowd of well-dressed men and beautiful women; the hurrying waiters; the lights; the fragrance of flowers and food, and scented laces; the chatter of laughing voices subdued by distance; and more unreal than all, the table surrounded by the faces that he knew, faces he had expected to find smiling in friendship, now frozen into something like horror—horror at him, Lord Loveland, whom everybody had always wanted and admired.

It could not be true. It was not happening really. Things like this did not happen.

He stood for a moment, stupidly, like a boy in the school-room who has been bidden to stand up and be stared at as a punishment for some misdemeanour. He was almost inclined to laugh at the insolence of Cadwallader Hunter, as a lion might laugh at a fox terrier worrying his foot. It was on his lips to say, "What a tempest in a tea-pot! Surely you're not going to believe any idiotic tale that tuft-hunting ass may have trumped up about me?"

But he bit back the words. If they chose to champion Cadwallader Hunter in his silly grievance against a Marquis of Loveland, why, let them. They would be sorry afterwards—when it was too late. To sneer Cadwallader Hunter down as he deserved would be to make a disagreeable scene, and the business was squalid enough already. He would have thought better of the Coolidges, if not of the Miltons, mother and daughter; but he said to himself that none of them were worth even the shrug of the shoulders he gave, as with his head held gallantly high, he passed on towards his own table.

The little dramatic episode, if observed by any audience, had been played too subtly to be understood by those not concerned. Those seated nearest might have seen that, when a handsome young man stopped to speak to some members of a party at a table, another man who did not belong to that party, had looked at him scornfully and whispered venomously; that then one or two others had spoken hurriedly, and that the handsome young man had stalked away apparently in disgust.

But several of the neighbours knew the party at the table by sight, and Cadwallader Hunter also. These consulted together, and wondered who was the tall young man who looked like an Englishman. The women commented flatteringly upon his face or his figure, but the men were of the opinion that, judging by the way Cadwallader Hunter ("Pepys Junior" they called him) had eyed the chap he must be the rankest kind of an outsider.

There were two chairs at Loveland's table-placed in case he might choose to bring a guest—and he deliberately selected the one which put him with his back to the Coolidge party. But he had forgotten that Major Cadwallader Hunter was not one of that party, and might wander at will to any part of the dining-room. Presently he did begin to wander, stopping to talk with another group of people, then with another, and so on, always on his way somewhere else.

Loveland, utterly sick now of his late friend, did not bestow a glance upon the thin, high-shouldered figure as it paused and flitted, flitted and paused, like a fastidious bee in a flower-garden. A polite waiter had slipped a menu into the hand of Loveland, who regarded the decorated square of cardboard as if it were a fetish to preserve him from evil. But if he had deigned to let his eye follow Cadwallader Hunter, he would have seen that each group of people glanced with furtive curiosity at him; stared, whispered, stared again, and afterwards signalled each other from table to table, across flowery spaces, lifting eyebrows and exchanging signs of a secret intelligence.

Cadwallader Hunter prided himself on knowing all the people who were worth knowing, wherever he went, and those he did not know at the start, he generally contrived to know at the finish. He had at least twenty or thirty acquaintances in the restaurant of the Waldorf-Astoria tonight; and having heard from one of these a startling piece of news (which would have been less welcome yesterday) he dropped bits of the rich honey-pollen here and there, as he made his way towards the door. He had dined early, because he had been minded to show himself, rather late, at the first performance of a new comedy by the brilliant young playwright, Sidney Cremer; but now he found himself appearing on the stage and acting almost a leading part in a drama a hundred times more exciting than he could see at any theatre. He went straight from the restaurant to the long row of desks in the hotel office for a heart to heart talk with the clerk he had interviewed in the morning. Then, having made the impression and obtained the assurance he desired, he searched for other acquaintances in that vast, decorative corridor of marble, facetiously known as "Peacock Alley." He knew several of the best Peacocks there (for there were all kinds, from North, South, West and East, to many of whom Cadwallader Hunter would not have deigned to bow, even if they were smeared with gold and dipped in diamonds), and he talked to those of his choice more loudly than he had talked in the dining-room. Acquaintances whom he button-holed, and strangers who could catch the drift of what he was saying—listened with interest, and then sat or stood about with the air of expecting that some exciting event might happen.

Meanwhile Loveland ordered his dinner, though not quite as carefully as he would had it not been for the disagreeable little incident which he tried to forget as if it were but one more in the series of pin-pricks. As he had no money—at present—to pay for it, he thought he might as well drown his vexations in champagne, and asked for a bottle of the brand he liked best, without even enquiring the New York conception of its price.

As the waiter would have gone off with the order, Val called him back, on a sudden thought. "Do you know the names of the people at the table where I stopped?"

"Yes, sir," replied the man. "They are very well known here. We often have them dining and lunching. Mr. Coolidge is a millionaire. He and his daughter are just back from Europe, and Mrs. and Miss Milton, too."

"Yes, yes," said Loveland, impatiently. "I know all that. But the others?"

"Oh, the smooth shaved gentleman with the black hair and prominent eyes, he's Mr. Milton, Mrs. Milton's husband, rather a gay sort of gentleman, sir. The story is, he and Mrs. Milton don't get along very pleasantly. There'll be plenty here tonight will be interested, seeing them together just after her coming home with the young lady. And the other gentleman, sir, the good-looking, young one with the dark moustache, that's one of our greatest New York swells, Mr. Henry van Cotter. He——"

"Thank you. That will do," broke in Loveland, suddenly annoyed by the servant's knowing loquacity. The name of Henry van Cotter had, in such a connection, stirred a dim sense of discomfort within him. This van Cotter was one of Harborough's friends. Val had left Jim's letter, and a visiting card this afternoon at a huge palace of an "apartment house," where Mr. van Cotter had a flat.

The waiter, thus checked, trotted away with the order for dinner, and was so long in returning that Val (who did not see him stopped and harangued by a grave-faced superior) wondered and grew impatient. Other people were served, while he still sat idle. He was not hungry, for an angry tingling in his veins had burnt up his appetite for dinner, as his keenness for luncheon had been destroyed, but he resented being kept waiting, as if he were a person of no importance.

At last he saw his waiter coming back, and was about to ask irritably whether the man thought it was tomorrow's breakfast he'd ordered, when a sealed envelope of the hotel paper was laid on the table in place of the expected oysters.

The servant discreetly retired out of sight behind his lordship's chair, like a little boy who has lit a squib and awaits the explosion; and Loveland tore open the envelope which, very oddly, he thought, was not addressed.

He had a vague expectation that the contents would prove to be a note from Cadwallader Hunter, and the reality came upon him as a complete surprise.

"Sir," he read, in neat typing, "the management of the hotel presents its compliments, and informs you that the suite you are occupying will be required from this evening, also that they regret they have no other room to place at your disposal. They therefore enclose your account up to date, and request the favour of immediate payment. Should you wish for dinner and wine, they would be obliged if you would kindly pay in advance. The bill for same (as ordered by you) is enclosed separately from the other account."

Now, surely, he would at last wake up from this wild nightmare, and find himself at home in England, or still on the ship. Nothing had seemed real since he landed, and could not be real. Foxham could not have stolen his clothes; the New York bank could not have refused to give him money; Cadwallader Hunter could not have induced Henry van Cotter, the Coolidges and Miltons to cut him; and, above all, the hotel he honoured with his patronage could not have flung in his face this monstrous insult.

Nevertheless, there was the bill staring up at him, as he stared down at it.

Lord Loveland, hardly knowing what he said or did in the persistent nightmare from which he could not wake, called the waiter to him, from ambush behind his chair.

The man came, with eyes cast patiently down, not to meet the angry blaze turned dangerously upon him. He knew that something was wrong, very wrong, indeed, but it was not his affair, except that he was consumed with honest curiosity, and he did not wish grievances to be visited on him.

"There must be some mistake here," said Loveland, folding up the paper, and replacing the three sheets in the envelope, with fingers that were not quite steady. "This can't be for me. You see, there's no name on the thing. You've brought it to the wrong person."

"No—o, sir," returned the servant. "I was told to bring it to you. If there's a mistake, sir, it isn't me who's made it."

"Very well, then, somebody else has," insisted Loveland. "I tell you this can't possibly be meant for me. Give the envelope back to whoever gave it to you, and ask him to hand it to the manager, saying that in error it was delivered to Lord Loveland."

"Yes, sir." The waiter obediently took charge of the offensive envelope, and ambled away with it, to confer at a distance with the person from whom it had been received five minutes ago. There were a few gestures, a few shrugs, and then the two approached Lord Loveland's table together.

"It's quite right, sir," murmured the newcomer. "The letter is for you, sir. There's no mistake." As if by way of reminder he gently laid the envelope down on the table, in the place where those iced Blue Points never would be now.

Deadly white under his brown tan, Val rose without a word, crumpling the envelope in a hand that itched to clutch someone by the throat, and flinging down a silver dollar for the waiter. The Coolidges and their party were still at the violet-decked table as Loveland passed by, but he did not see them. He had forgotten their existence.

"Papa, the Major has done it!" exclaimed Elinor Coolidge, looking across at her father, who sat between Mrs. Milton and Fanny.

"Yes, he has done it," replied Mr. Coolidge, smiling the wooden smile which was of fair, carved ivory when reproduced on the beautiful face of his daughter. "I don't know what's come over the Major since this morning. He seemed to love that Englishman like a son, on board the Mauretania; but tonight he fairly jumped out of himself with joy when he heard Van Cotter's piece of news."

"I'm sure we were all as nice as we could be to Lord—to him," faltered Fanny Milton, who had drained the lake from her eyes when no one was looking, but only to make way, it seemed, for a new supply of salt water.

"Oh, speak for yourself, Fanny," said Mrs. Milton, with her exaggerated English accent. "As for me, I——"

"Why, Mamma, you were just lovely to him, every minute!" cried the girl, defending herself briskly. "If you weren't married, with a grown-up daughter, people might have thought you were in love with him yourself, sometimes."

"Nonsense!" retorted Fanny's mother, darting a furious look at her child. "The way you talk shows you're not grown up."

"I always thought he was the most conceited young man I ever saw," broke in Elinor Coolidge. "I could have boxed his ears often, and it would have served him right. I just enjoy this. It's like a play."

"Well, I think that's real mean of you, Elinor," said Fanny. "And I don't see how you can feel that way. He looks so pale—it makes me sick to think what he's got to go through, poor fellow, and he's so handsome! Did you ever see anything as beautiful as he looked just now when he went stalking by us with his head high, and his face pale, and his eyes like blue fire?"

"I certainly never saw a British 'Lord' as handsome. They don't make 'em like that," said good-looking Henry van Cotter; and then they all laughed—all except Fanny Milton. She was wondering what Lesley Dearmer would do, if she were here tonight, instead of tearing away towards Louisville as fast as an express train could carry her. Lesley had been Loveland's friend, in quite an unpretending, humble little way, knowing that she was no match for him, and never could be. But Lesley was a strange girl. She thought of such odd, original things to do. Would she do anything odd and original if she were here now? And if she did, would it be for or against the man who was down?

As it happened, Lesley was thinking of Lord Loveland at that very moment. Perhaps it was a kind of telepathy which brought her image so clearly before Fanny Milton's eyes; for Lesley's thoughts included Fanny.

It was not yet time for the coloured porters to begin "making down" the beds in the sleeping cars, and Lesley and her aunt sat opposite one another, each with a book in her hand. Mrs. Loveland had a story of the South, as she could dimly remember it, before the Civil War, and she was reading with interest half sad, half pleased. Lesley had a novel, too, one which had been making quite a sensation while she was in Europe, and her aunt had bought it for her in the Grand Central Station, before taking the train. She had often said that she would like to read the book, but now, though her eyes travelled from one line to another, and she mechanically turned a page here and there, she did not even know the names of the characters, or what they were saying or doing.

The panting of the great engine and the rushing roar of the wheels had come to have a refrain for her. "Never again—never again," she heard them say, as if the words were shouted spitefully into her ears. "Never see him again—never again. He'll forget you—forget you. Soon he'll marry—marry some rich girl."

Then she wondered who the rich girl would be. Elinor Coolidge, perhaps? Elinor was very rich, and very beautiful, and already very proud. Everything about her was superlative. A great many glowing descriptive adjectives were called for, when one only thought about Elinor, and Lesley's experience as a story-writer had made her expert with adjectives—painfully expert, it seemed now, as her imagination ran ahead—even ahead of the rushing train—to picture Elinor as a bride.

"Oh, I'm sure she wouldn't make him happy!" Lesley thought, and then asked herself whether Lord Loveland deserved to be happy.

No, of course he didn't deserve happiness with a girl he married for money. Yet Lesley couldn't bear to think of him as miserable or disappointed in life. The brilliant sparks which showered past the train windows seemed to her like the moments she had spent with Loveland, moments left behind for ever now, and she could not help wishing that she might live them over again.

"Perhaps I might have helped him to be different, if I'd tried," she said to herself, as she watched the specks of fire which flashed and died. "But I didn't try. I was too proud to try, I suppose. It was a silly kind of pride, for he could be—he could be such a man, if he knew himself, and would live up to himself."

Elinor could not help him to do that. She was not the kind of girl to dream of the existence of that real self, of which Lesley had fancied she caught glimpses sometimes, as if behind a veil that never had been torn aside. Miss Coolidge would be well enough satisfied with Lord Loveland as he was, for she would only want from him material things, such things as she could afford to buy with her money. And if they married, the bright loveableness in Val's nature would be clouded and obscured. He would grow hard, and wholly selfish.

But with Fanny Milton, if he should marry her?

It was just as Lesley asked herself this question, that Fanny's thoughts flew to Lesley, wondering what Lesley would do if she saw Lord Loveland held up to public scorn.

"Fanny would love him," Lesley reflected. "But——" Her mind paused at that "But," and she took herself to task for mean jealousy because it was in her head, or her heart, that Fanny would not love him in the way best for his highest development. "She'd spoil and pet him, and make him worse than he is now, because it's a strong tonic, not a diet of sugar that he needs. And if he said a cross word, or looked at another woman, Fanny would cry."

Although Lesley knew that all this was true, still she was afraid that jealousy of a girl looked upon by Lord Loveland as eligible, was really the foundation of her argument.

"I am jealous," she admitted, "although I have no right to be. I could have made him care enough about me to lose his head and say that if I'd promise to marry him, he'd count the world well lost. Oh, yes, I could have done that! I know it. But how would he have felt, the minute the words were out of his mouth? He'd have regretted them bitterly, and thought himself mad. Then, even if I'd said 'no'—which I would have said, of course,—he'd have thought forever with a kind of wild horror of the narrow escape he'd had, and all his memory of me would have been spoiled. Oh, I'm glad, glad, I kept it to friendship from first to last, and laughed at him always! I told him that he'd forget, and that I wanted him to forget; but I don't, and he won't. Just because we were friends, and because I laughed, and was different from the others, he'll remember—even years from now, when he's married, and the world has given him all it can."

Of course Lesley ought not to have been glad that Loveland would remember her as the one dear blessing he had been denied, and think of her when it would be more suitable that he should be thinking of his Marchioness; but she was glad, with a kind of fierce gladness that hurt, and made her young face look strained in the crude white light of the sleeping-car.

"Dear me, Lesley, that must be an exciting book!" complained Aunt Barbara. "I've spoken to you twice without your hearing."

"I'm so sorry, dear," said Lesley.

"What's it about?" asked the elder woman, who had dutifully put away her novel, because it had occurred to her that it was time to go to bed.

"About?" echoed Lesley. "Oh—about love. And marrying the wrong people."

"What a pity!" sighed Aunt Barbara. "I do think stories ought all to end well, don't you?"

"Some can't," said the girl. "It wouldn't be for the best, I suppose, if they did."

"You look tired, dear," said Mrs. Loveland. "How happy and peaceful we shall feel when we're at home again."

"I wonder?" answered Lesley. But she whispered the words too softly for Aunt Barbara to hear.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Exit Lord Loveland

Loveland walked out of the dining-room of the Waldorf-Astoria hardly knowing what he meant to do.

His wish was to punish those who had insulted him; but how?—was the question ringing in his brain. A gentleman could not knock down a management, or punch its head. "A Management" seemed intangible, out of reach.

Val's first thought was to march up to the desk, and "have a row" with somebody, but an instant's reflection showed him that it would be more in accordance with dignity to go to his own quarters and command a representative of the "Management" to come to him.

This resolve he carried out. Having reached his room, and called down through the telephone for the manager, he was not kept waiting long before a gentlemanly, middle-aged person appeared at his sitting-room door.

"Are you the manager of this hotel?" Loveland enquired brusquely.

"I represent the manager," the newcomer returned.

"Very well, then," said Loveland. "I want you to tell me the meaning of this." And he indicated the typewritten letter and the two bills, which he had laid conspicuously on the table.

The man scarcely glanced at the papers, about which he was evidently well informed already. "The meaning is, that unfortunately we're obliged to request that you vacate this suite immediately," he replied.

"Then, this notice is actually intended for me?"

"It certainly is."

"Why were the rooms let to me this morning if they were wanted tonight?"

"That I can't say. I only know they are wanted."

"Suppose I refuse to go?"

"Oh, I guess you won't do that."

"You're right," said Val. "I wouldn't stop here now if you paid me twelve times as much as you want me to pay you. And, by the way—I can't pay tonight. You'll have to wait till tomorrow, when I can get to the—er—bank."

"I'm afraid we can't wait," the other answered quickly. "If you aren't able to pay we shall have to keep your baggage till you do."

Loveland stared. "That's a little too steep, isn't it?" he sneered. "You turn me out of your hotel in the most insulting and unprovoked manner, and then expect me to go somewhere else without my luggage. Are these American manners with foreigners?"

"They have to be, with some foreigners," returned the other, smiling mysteriously.

"I intend to go now, whether you like or not," said Val, "and take my luggage with me."

"You can't take it unless you pay your bill. That's the law, and our police know how to enforce it. If I were you I wouldn't do anything to make it necessary to call the police. Once in their hands, you might be quite a while getting out, you know."

Loveland clenched his hands, to keep from striking this mouth-piece of the "Management." He would not be drawn into a vulgar brawl, as a preface to his New York campaign in search of an heiress. Things had begun badly enough, as they were, but nothing had happened yet at which he might not be able to laugh—rather bitterly perhaps—tomorrow. He had heard of horrors in connection with the New York police; innocent British visitors arrested and kept for days in gaol, for some offence never committed; the newspapers printing lies about them, to be copied in London, and read by their shocked acquaintances. Such things he had been told, and though they mightn't be true, Loveland could not afford to risk any such incident for himself. He was far too important.

It seemed to him that there was a peculiar significance, almost a menace, in the hint he had just been given. If he were a criminal escaping from justice, instead of a British peer with a proud name which he would willingly bestow on a daughter of America, just such an emphasis might have been used to warn him that he had better bear the ills he knew, if he did not want to incur worse evils.

Val believed that Cadwallader Hunter had somehow contrived to bring about this hideous state of affairs; though he could not imagine how, unless all Americans were ready to band together and avenge one another's fancied wrongs against a stranger. On the face of it, nothing could be more ridiculous than to suppose that an Englishman of title was being asked to leave a New York hotel in the evening, because he had been a little rude to a retired Major and a newspaper man, in the morning. Yet, for his life, Loveland could think of no other reason; and his polite but cold companion did not seem inclined to explain, unless in answer to undignified entreaties.

"My luggage is worth a lot more than what I owe you here," he said.

"We have heard all about that luggage," was the meaning reply.

Val bit his lip. For the moment he had forgotten Foxham's treachery, but he remembered it now with recurring rage. Evidently the valet had poured forth the history of the great unpacking episode.

Lord Loveland made no retort to the innuendo, for he was busy with a mental calculation. His sole worldly possessions in America consisted of the things he had had in use on board ship. The luggage itself was old, though good of its kind; and the silver fittings in his suit-case would not fetch much if sold. As for his watch, it was a mere cheap, stop-gap affair of gun-metal, bought to tide over the interval until he could redeem the gold repeater he had rashly pawned in London. The studs and sleeve-links that he was wearing were the poorest in his collection. They had been Foxham's choice for the voyage, not his; and now he understood Foxham's underlying motive.

"In my opinion we shall be lucky if the sale of your effects covers the bill," calmly went on the representative of the "Management."

"I wouldn't advise your people to try and sell my things!" exclaimed Loveland.

"They will wait the customary length of time."

"They'd better be jolly careful what they do," Loveland broke out. "Anyhow, I'm much mistaken if I haven't a case in law against the hotel already. If I have—and in justice I ought to have—I shall proceed."

The other smiled for the first time. "I don't expect that any of us will lie awake nights worrying," said he.

Loveland tried to crush the man with a look, but he was not to be so easily abashed. "I've said all I want to say now," Val informed him icily. "You can go, and I will give up the rooms when I'm ready."

"That's all right, as long as it's inside half an hour," returned the other, still with unruffled politeness. "But I have to stay till you do give them up."

"Why this fondness for my society?" enquired Loveland, with raised eyebrows.

The man smiled with a certain good-natured perception of the humour in the situation. "It's duty keeps me as much as pleasure," said he.

"Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest, eh? This hotel seems to follow that rule with a vengeance. But I'll take the will for the deed. Strange as it may seem" (Loveland was enjoying his own sarcasm) "I want you to go."

"Very sorry I can't oblige you."

"Confound you, do you think I'll set the place on fire the minute your back is turned?"

"Not so much that as—there are other things you might do."

"What other things? Really I should like to know, for the sake of curiosity."

"Well, if you're bound to get it out of me, I've got to stay and see you don't remove any articles of value."

"By Jove! So that's it? My own, or yours?"

"What's yours is ours at present, and what's ours is our own—as the bride said to the bridegroom."

Val could almost have laughed, though not at the joke. He—the Marquis of Loveland, an officer in the Grenadier Guards—was to be watched lest he should steal the hotel soap, or sneak off with his own toothbrush!

He went white and red, and white again. If by a word he could have tumbled the whole hotel down in an earthquake, he would have been willing to be caught under the ruins. He had a wild, boyish conviction that by subjecting himself now to the extremest inconvenience, he could by and by cause the hotel management poignant remorse. Yes, he would take them at their word. He would walk out of the house just as he was, leaving everything he had behind him. This would make their guilt the blacker when it came to be brought up against them, as it would be very soon, probably as soon as tomorrow. Then they would seek him out, and crawl in apology, begging him to come back at any price, or at no price. But nothing would induce him to cross the threshold of the Waldorf-Astoria again, no, not even if every member of the staff grovelled at his feet. He would not even take his overcoat, and if he were struck down with pneumonia, so much the worse for these insolent people. As for himself, he did not care what happened. He felt as he had when a little boy, and some tutor of unusual firmness had dared to reproach him or attempt punishment. At such times he had wished that he might instantly die, or at the least, fall in a fit, for the sake of frightening his cruel persecutor.

His cap (his only head-covering, as he had forgotten a bowler on board ship) lay on a table, and he held it out for the enemy's inspection. "You say all that is mine is yours," he sneered. "This may have cost six or seven shillings when it was new. Now it would fetch two at most. I will pay you for it. Half a crown is the least I have. Pray, keep the change."

He laid a coin—his last large coin—down on the table where the cap had been, and without another word walked nonchalantly out of the room.

The gentlemanly man did not follow to protest, or to offer the overcoat, as Val half fancied he would do. And without stopping to think coherently, Loveland passed by the lift, scorning to take advantage of its convenience, and ran down flight after flight of stairs, his blood drumming in his ears.

A red cloud before his eyes seemed to screen him from the world. Below, in the great hall through which he had to pass on his way out of the hotel, lights glared and dazzled, and the talk and laughter of many persons sounded in his ears like the evil voices of the Black Stones that beset Arabian Nights' travellers on their way to the Singing Tree and the Golden Water.

Loveland pushed on, blindly, conscious of himself as the one real entity in a crowd of Will o' the Wisps, and wicked lure-lights. His sole concern with the people in the hateful, glaring picture, was that they should suspect nothing of his feelings. He walked with his head up and something that he meant for a smile on his lips; nor was it an affectation that he appeared to recognize no one, though Cadwallader Hunter—who had been waiting to see this exit—believed it to be.

The Major was standing almost in Loveland's path, speaking with a lady whose name had been on one of Jim Harborough's envelopes, and as the tall Englishman came towards him, he deliberately turned his back.

"Sic semper milordibus," he said half aloud. Which far-fetched witticism made the lady laugh.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Shadows

The night was warm for November in New York; still, there was a decided crispness in the air which Loveland felt as he went out.

The streets were brilliant with light, and half New York appeared to be abroad, although the theatres had been in full swing for nearly an hour. But all the women wore cloaks, and the men overcoats. Loveland, in his dinner jacket and wide expanse of shirt front, his pumps and silk stockings, his cloth travelling cap pulled over his eyes, would have been noticeable even if his height and good looks had not made him a marked figure. Everybody who passed stared, and more than a few glanced back at him. Here and there some pretty woman laughed at a joking comment whispered by her escort; and when his first hot rage began to cool, it was uncomfortably borne in upon Loveland that he was the observed of many observers.

Like most Englishmen, he loathed being conspicuous, and in his present plight it was especially hateful, since being conspicuous meant also to be ridiculous.

His ears, shut by anger, were opened by vanity, and he heard a woman say to a man that he "looked as if he'd just been turned down by his best girl." "And kicked out by Pa," added her companion; at which they both giggled, and the tingling in Loveland's veins drove out the chill which had begun to creep in.

He longed to call a cab, and hide himself from staring eyes, but he had scarcely a shilling left. There was nothing to do but walk on, until he found some hotel which would take him in on trust. As his brain cooled, he began to realise that it might be difficult to find any such hotel.

Here he was, on a winter's night, a foreigner in a strange city, walking the streets without an overcoat, and with only a coin or two in his pocket. He remembered that, in the afternoon, when dealing out visiting cards and letters of introduction, he had slipped his cardcase into a pocket of his overcoat, where it still remained. That overcoat remained in one of the rooms lately his at the Waldorf-Astoria. What a fool he had been after all to leave it behind. The watcher could hardly have torn it off his back. As it was, a whim of silly pride had deprived him of a means of identification, as well as a decent protection for his body.

Why should a hotel-keeper consent to take him in, without luggage, and with nothing save his bare word—not even a bit of engraved pasteboard—to prove that he was the Marquis of Loveland? He had never put himself mentally in the place of anything so low down in the social scale as the keeper of a hotel; yet instinctively he performed the feat now, and judged the case against his own interests.

Nevertheless, as he did not wish to prowl about New York all night, he could but try his luck. Meeting a policeman, he enquired for a respectable, inexpensive hotel in a quiet street, not too far away; and did his best to look unconscious of the big man's concentrated gaze fixed on the large white oval of his shirt front.

"Yez might try the New House, on Toyty Thoyd Street," was the advice that followed upon reflection; and Loveland was obliged to ask three times before he was able to translate "Toyty Thoyd" into Thirty-third Street. Then, he had to turn and retrace his steps, for he had been wandering uptown, and must have covered some distance, as he guessed by the length of time it took him to reach the Waldorf-Astoria again. Coming near, so that the huge building loomed above him like a mountain flaming on all its heights, he was tempted to cross to the other side of the street; but, ashamed of the impulse as childish, he marched stolidly ahead, and even forced himself to turn his face towards the brilliant square of the door-way. As the light caught and photographed him in passing, a man who had been standing in front of the hotel under the iron canopy, with the air of waiting for someone, started after Loveland, walking just fast enough to keep him well in sight.

Val turned into Thirty-third Street, and stopped before the New House, which advertised itself in a blaze of starry electric letters. The man on his trail smiled as he saw the tall figure in evening dress hesitate for an instant, and then hurl himself at a revolving door. He himself strolled on, but he did not go far. When he had taken a dozen steps he wheeled, passed the hotel again, took a dozen more steps, and again came back.

He was a short man, with square shoulders, a large, close-cropped black head set on a short neck into which a double chin bulged, as if he had swallowed a sponge, and it had stuck in his throat as it expanded. His hair glittered like a thick coat of black varnish, and his black eyes glittered also. They looked out from under heavy lids which pouched underneath, and were set too close on either side of a well-cut nose. He was clean shaven, thus making the most of his best feature, a mouth which was handsome despite the hard lines that deep draughts from the cup of life had traced round it. The man was well dressed, with a white silk scarf protecting his evening shirt from the sealskin lining of his overcoat, and he looked not only successful but confident of success. Yet there was anxiety and nervous excitement in the flash of his eyes towards the door of the hotel, each time he passed and repassed.

It was when he had just taken his sixth turn that Loveland shot out through the revolving door even more suddenly than he had shot in. The watcher was near enough to see the look on his face—the tenseness of the lips and drawing together of the eyebrows—and his own expression said "I thought so!" as plainly as words—if there had been anyone there to read it. But Loveland was entirely absorbed in himself, and in bitter thoughts of the hateful experience he had just gone through. He did not notice the man who lingered not far away, and the few people passing had no idea that a little drama was being enacted in pantomime under their eyes. They all looked at the tall young Englishman without an overcoat, but they did not connect the other man with him.

It was hardly to be hoped that there would be a room disengaged in a hotel for a nervous young gentleman with an exposed white shirt-front, no luggage, and a missing cardcase. When Val had explained that he was Lord Loveland, just landed from England, the hotel clerk turned away to hide either a yawn or a grin, and seemed no more inclined to remember the existence of an unoccupied bedroom than if his client had been plain Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones.

"We had a gentleman from England here last week," he said, pleasantly. "His name was Walker, London. Sorry we can't accommodate your lordship."

Then Loveland had squared his shoulders and marched out into the night, which seemed by now grimly cold and unfriendly. The very stars had a sarcastic twinkle, as if they glimmered down from their safe, comfortable heights and laughed.

Val was not inclined to try any more hotels. He felt very young in his loneliness and humiliation, and his heart yearned wistfully for the shabby Scotch shooting-box where his mother lived and thought long thoughts of her. The snow that had fallen so coldly outside her windows seemed warmer than these stars that with their sparkling embroidery canopied a strange land; and the sparsely furnished rooms of the lodge were more beautiful in his remembrance than the gorgeous suite at the Waldorf-Astoria.

His mother grudged herself comforts for his sake, yet she had a fire. Val generally pictured her in autumn and winter, bending towards the glow of the rosy flames, holding out her beautifully shaped hands to their kisses. He would be thankful to share the warmth of that fire now; and the faint scent of burning peat—cheapest fuel!—as it stole fragrantly into his memory, gave him a horrid twinge of homesickness such as he had never felt, even in South Africa; for he had had friends around him in the war days.

When he had been in Scotland last—on that flying visit which began with good advice and ended with pink pearls—he had complained of the cooking.

He thought of that, too, at this moment, and laughed a little to himself. He would have been very glad of a chance to taste some of that Scotch broth which he had discarded because it was too thick and too salt. He was sharply hungry; and this hunger gnawed with a wicked persistence it had lacked in South Africa, because in those stirring times it had been shared by all alike, merrily, with jokes.

Yes, he was hungry, sickeningly hungry; and he did not see any prospect of satisfying his appetite that night, unless he should tear the gold sleeve-links out of his shirtcuffs to offer humbly in some cheap restaurant in exchange for a meal. They were not worth much intrinsically; but the thought of the cuffs denuded, ignominious, and the picture of himself—metaphorically—swallowing the buttons like a conjurer, so revolted his fastidious imagination, that he snatched at an alternative, almost any alternative. So it was that, when something which his mother would have called an inspiration floated nebulously through his head, Loveland welcomed it as an astronomer welcomes a new star.

He remembered hearing Betty or Jim Harborough say that in American towns a man might call upon a family he knew well, up to the hour of ten in the evening. It was not nearly ten yet, and though there was no family in New York whom Val knew well, it was a case of any port in a storm.

The Coolidges were now out of the running, and the Miltons; but a Mr. and Mrs. Beverly, with a daughter, had (half apologetically) invited him to visit at their house in Park Avenue. They were rich or richish, though with a trail of trade behind them, and the girl was pretty or prettyish. She seemed positively beautiful to the hungry and homeless Loveland, as the vision of her face lightened the cloud of his misery, and he would have been almost ready to pledge his future to Miss Beverly for a mess of pottage in the way of a kindly welcome, a dinner, a bed, and money in hand for the letter of credit.

He had cannily refused the invitation, pleading many engagements difficult to keep if visiting (the same formula had answered several hospitable offers), but he could easily explain the late call, by lightly recounting the story of his misfortune, making a jest of it, and throwing himself on the family's mercy. He hoped and believed that they would insist upon his staying all night in their house, also that a loan sufficient to pay his hotel bill and redeem his luggage might be suggested.

The prospect of release from all his woes was so soothing, and apparently so easy to compass, that the mere thought was a warming cordial. Val walked briskly back into Fifth Avenue, and asked the way of the first man he met.

The man was amiable, and Loveland felt an impulse of gratitude towards him for lucid and fluent explanations. After all, some of these Americans had very agreeable manners!

Val found Park Avenue a dignified street, and with the pleasantest anticipations ran up the steps of the Beverlys' house, the number of which had fortunately stuck in his memory. There were lights in all the windows of the two lower floors, and as he pressed the electric bell, he saw a shadow flit across the half transparent silk curtains—a shadow which was like a faint silhouette of plump little Madge Beverly.

"It's all right—they're at home, thank goodness!" he said to himself, as he waited for the door to open; and a sense of calm well-being fell upon him, with the assurance that his troubles were over at last. It was like the joy of a bad sailor when the bell of the Channel boat clangs at Calais after a hideous welter of seas in crossing.

A neat servant was soon framed against a yellow background of cheerful light; and at some distance, screened in shadow, the man who had followed Loveland waited once more with a certain anxiety in his eyes.

Val enquired for Mr. and Mrs. Beverly. They were at home, said the servant, in the "living room," with a party of relations who had come to welcome them back after their visit to Europe. If the gentleman would step into the reception room and send up his card, Mr. and Mrs. Beverly would no doubt be down in a minute.

"But when people are at home one doesn't send in one's card," said Loveland, arguing according to English ways.

The servant, trained to American fashions and knowing no others, looked surprised at this statement. He thought the tall gentleman without an overcoat must be a peculiar person, and he had been taught to distrust peculiar persons.

"Tell your master and mistress that Lord Loveland has called, but will not keep them long from their friends," said Val, growing impatient under the man's narrow look.

The servant resented the suggestion that, as a free man, in a free country, he could have a master and mistress. And a Lord Anybody sounded like a practical joke to him; for though he had begun by being a Swede, he had been an American since he was short-coated. However, he was well trained, according to his lights and the family traditions of the Beverlys. He ushered the Practical Joker into a handsome drawing-room, and vanished upstairs to explain the odd young gentleman who never announced himself with cards.

The parlour was a very nice parlour, tastefully furnished. There were portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Beverly, facing each other upon the walls; and the lady's picture, evidently painted many years ago, so poignantly suggested what Madge would be at her age, that Loveland was alarmed.

"I'll do anything else to show my gratitude except marry the daughter," he was making up his mind in advance, when the servant returned, with a grave face. Indeed, it could not have been more solemn if he had come to break the news that all Lord Loveland's surviving relatives had perished together in a holocaust.

"Mr. and Mrs. Beverly are very sorry, sir," said the man, "but they are too much engaged to see anybody tonight."

Val rose, haughtily. His pride and his hopes had both received another severe rap, all the sharper because unexpected, but his face did not show his mortification.

"I'll trouble you to open the door," he said, as the servant stood petrified. And so once more Lord Loveland was thrown upon the hospitality of the streets. The flitting shadows were gone from the windows, which still gleamed cheerily; but they were dark to the outcast's heart.

"I needn't have bothered about how to show my gratitude," he reminded himself. "I don't think they're exactly going to make a point of my marrying their girl, after all."

He was able to smile at this thought, but it was a very faint, chill smile. And his amazement at the treatment he was receiving everywhere, in place of the flattering attention he had been led to expect, was blank and blind as a high stone wall without doors or windows.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A Proposition

Naturally it occurred to Val that the trail of Cadwallader Hunter must have reached as far as the Beverly household; and almost he found it in his heart to respect a man with executive ability to accomplish so swift, so sweeping, so secret a revenge.

"The old fellow must have had a busy day," Loveland thought, half amused on top of hunger and discouragement. He pictured the Major running lithely about since the snub at lunchtime, up to the last moment before dressing for dinner, prejudicing all the friends made on board the Mauretania against the Englishman to whom he had proudly introduced them.

And besides, one must grant a certain cleverness to a brain able to weave grounds of prejudice against a person—nay, a personage—important and unimpeachable, as Loveland considered himself to be. How Cadwallader Hunter had done it, Val could not imagine; but that the mysterious thing which had been done was the Major's work, he did not doubt. As for the bother with the bank, of course that was another matter, a coincidence unconnected with the annoyances which had followed, for Cadwallader Hunter could not have known anything about the letter of credit, or where it was to be presented. And though the spiteful old thing was apparently acquainted with Mr. van Cotter, who had been one of the Coolidge party, he could scarcely have read clairvoyantly all the names on the letters of introduction, even if he knew the people.

As Val asked himself forlornly what was left for him to do next, this last argument brought consolation, and a welcome new idea at the same time. As the Major had "got hold of" the Coolidges, the Miltons and Beverlys, why not go and throw himself on the mercy of some of Jim Harborough's friends?

Loveland had conscientiously distributed all the letters in the afternoon, and had put the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel as a New York address on his visiting cards. Now, owing to unforeseen circumstances (another name for the Major's vindictiveness) that address was his no longer. When people called, as no doubt they would do tomorrow, they were likely to find that he had vanished into space. Yes, without doubt the best thing he could do was to call tonight at one of the houses where he had alighted in the afternoon. He would walk to the nearest one; but—now he came to think of it, which was the nearest, and of which was he certain that he could remember the street and number?

Val had not charged his mind with the addresses on the letters, so sure had he been that the recipients would lose no time in calling. Now, he went over the eight or nine names in his head, and thought that he had kept them all straight; but to save his life he could not say which number, which street, appertained to which person.

This was a dilemma, almost a calamity. But one address seemed to stand out before his eyes—a number in Fifth Avenue; and he thought it was a Mrs. Anson who lived there. The house was a handsome one, at a corner. He had admired it; and as it was not far uptown he would not have more than a mile to travel. He could still make his visit, and tell his pitiful tale, before ten o'clock.

He walked fast, and it was by an effort that the man of the shadows kept him in sight; for Val's legs were long, and his were not. But he did contrive to cling close enough to see a tall figure slowly descend a flight of stone steps climbed with alert hopefulness a few moments earlier.

This time there was a discouraged droop of the head and shoulders and a dragging hesitation in the gait which seemed to show that the wanderer did not know what his next move ought to be.

At last the watcher decided that he had waited long enough. The Englishman had come to the end of his tether. He was tired out and sick at heart; in fact, precisely in the mood which the other had been patiently expecting.

Loveland walked away from the house where Mrs. Anson was "giving a dinner party and regretted that she was unable to receive visitors." Jim Harborough's friend! Could it be that Cadwallader Hunter's tentacles had wormed themselves round this lady's sympathies also, or was the dismissal another coincidence, like that of the bank? Loveland did not know, but he did know that the sole possessions left him were a great hunger which he might not satisfy, and a great longing to have somewhere to lay his head.

"Good evening," said the man who had caught up with him, speaking somewhat breathlessly, but in a friendly voice.

Loveland turned with a slight start, and looked at the other's face, which at that moment could be plainly seen by the light of a street lamp.

There was a vague familiarity in the stranger's appearance, but Val had come into contact with so many new people lately, that he could attach no label to these features.

"I was dining near you at the Waldorf-Astoria," explained the unknown.

"Oh!" exclaimed Loveland, instantly adjusting the label. "You were with the Coolidges, I remember." The tips of his ears began to tingle. This fellow must have seen him walk out of the restaurant where he'd been denied his dinner—probably knew that he had been practically turned away from the hotel, because he hadn't the money to pay his bill.

"My name's Milton," the short, dark man introduced himself. "I've been trying to catch you up for some time."

"Why?" abruptly asked Loveland, suspicious of everybody and everything now.

"Why? Oh, well, I wanted the pleasure of a conversation with you."

"You know who I am?" Loveland enquired.

"Yes, I know who you are." Mr. Milton emphasised each word separately, as if with a tap of a miniature hammer. There was an intentional significance in his way of speaking, but the meaning was obscure to Loveland.

Val could not guess what the other's object was in following him, and in his smarting sensitiveness was on guard against some new indignity.

"I met Mrs. Milton and—your daughter, on the Mauretania," he ventured, by way of keeping on neutral ground until he should learn where to take his stand. And truth to tell, he had been so miserable in his homesickness, his sense of desertion and humiliation, that any friendly-seeming companionship was pitifully welcome. A few hours ago he would have quickly decided that he did not like the man's face or manner, and would have made no bones about snubbing him; but there was a high barrier between "then" and "now," and Lord Loveland almost clung to Mr. Milton.

"I know you met my wife and daughter on the Mauretania," said the watcher. "That's why I was anxious to make your acquaintance."

Loveland laughed. "You're the first person since I left the ship, who has wanted to make it," he retorted. "And it struck me this evening that neither Mrs. nor Miss Milton was keen on keeping it."

"Miss Milton is a child," answered Miss Milton's father. "She daren't say her soul's her own, if her mother says it isn't; and Mrs. Milton has reasons over and above what anyone else may have, for not wanting to know you, in front of me."

"Over and above what anyone else may have?" Val repeated, lost in surprise at this turning. "Why should she or anyone have reasons for not wanting to know me? That's the thing I should like to find out. Perhaps you'll be good enough to explain the mystery—if you can? What has Major Cadwallader Hunter been doing to put all New York against me?"

"So far as I can see, it wasn't the Major who set the ball rolling, though of course he'd like people to think he was on to it from the first. And it seems he heard you give yourself away a bit to a girl one day, on shipboard—or says he did. But let's not discuss that now. What you are, or what you did before you stepped on board the Mauretania's nothing to me. The game you and I are in together (as it's up to me to show you) is this. You're in a pretty bad scrape, and you want to get out of it. Is that true or isn't it?"

"Yes, it's true enough," admitted Val. "But that's not the question. I——"

"Excuse me, it is the question, where I'm concerned. I don't go back on that. I don't want to know anything, or be in anything, else. I can help you out of your fix. That's what I'm here to do."

"Thank you," said Val, drily. "But why?" He half expected that Mr. Milton's quid pro quo would be a promise in advance to make Fanny the Marchioness of Loveland.

"Well, I'm coming to that, in one minute and a half. First and foremost let's chat about what I can do for you. Then we'll get to what you can do for me. I guess a thousand dollars would come handy to you, wouldn't it, especially if you could see half in hard cash tonight?"

"If I saw any 'hard cash,' as you call it, lying in the street, and nobody claimed it, I confess I might find a temporary use for the money," said Loveland. "The trouble is, my letter of credit——"

"I know all about that letter of credit, just as well as if you'd told me," broke in Mr. Milton, with a queer mingling of tolerant good-nature and roughness which puzzled Loveland so much that he almost forgot to be annoyed.

"Tomorrow it will be all right," Val went on.

"I wouldn't bet on its being all right tomorrow," said Milton. "But we can wait to talk business till the day after, if you like. That'll suit me just as well; for I stand to make better terms. It's for you to say where. I can give you my card, and you can drop round at my club—I don't ask you to write, for by that time it might happen you wouldn't have a stamp, or a sheet of paper handy. You can call day after tomorrow, and we'll have our talk then. So long as we've established communication, there isn't much danger of your losing touch with me till we've fixed something up."

"I don't like your manner or your innuendoes," said Loveland, stiffening.

"Oh, I don't mean any innuendoes," protested Mr. Milton, apologetically. "Let's keep friends. I want to help you. You had a little trouble with them at the hotel, didn't you?"

"I was abominably insulted, and I'll make them regret it."

"The best way to do that is to pay the bill right off. There's five hundred dollars in my pocket that's just crying to be in yours. And five hundred more——"

"What do you want me to do?" sharply asked Loveland.

"You'd like to know whether the candle's worth the game, eh? Well, I'm no Shylock. But see here, shall we come to terms over a drink? We're not far off the best bar in New York, and——"

"No, thank you," Val cut in decidedly, though he was cold enough, and hollow enough within to be tempted by the thought of warmth, and refreshment of any sort. "Tell me now what possible motive you, a stranger, can have in offering to lend me two hundred pounds."

"I said nothing about lending," insinuated Mr. Milton. "But if you like to call it a loan, you can. You've got your 'family traditions' to keep up, I suppose?" And he laughed in high good humour.

"I have," said Val, coldly.

"That's all right," returned the other. "Well, to get to business then. You were on pretty friendly terms with Mrs. Milton on board ship?"

"She was very kind to me," replied Val, more sure than ever now that the proposal to come would be matrimonial.

"Good! You've heard, I expect, from Cadwallader Hunter, or some other general purveyor of gossip, that she and I aren't on the best of terms—that we don't get along like a pair of turtle doves?"

"I believe I did hear some hint of that sort, which went in at one ear and out at the other."

"You needn't consider my feelings. My wife and I hate each other like poison. She'd have thrown me over long ago, if she didn't want my money—all my money; not what she might get in alimony if we said 'Goodbye; the parting words are spoken.' Eh? Well, that's just what I do want to say to her. We've never had any open break, but the time's come. That's why I sent her to Europe, and sent for her to come back. I played my fish, and now I want to land it. A queer fish, Mrs. Milton is, too, bye the bye. I'm going to bring a case against her, and I want to use you for a trump card in it. You understand?"

A hot wave of rage swept over Loveland. He did understand, and never in his life had he been so angry. He had not known it was in him to be so angry at a thing which did not affect his own selfish interests; but he was not thinking of himself at all. A new or, at least, unknown self stirred faintly in the depths where all his life it had lain asleep, because, perhaps, it had never been called upon to wake. He was not angry because such a proposal had been made to him—Lord Loveland; he had not thought of that part yet. Disgust with the man who could make such a proposition was the one emotion which shook him.

"You beast!" he broke out, in his young, clear voice.

The other man looked up at the flushed, angry face in genuine surprise.

"Oh, I suppose I haven't offered 'your lordship' enough," he sneered, with a sarcastic emphasis on the title. "Well, I'll raise you——"

But something unexpected happened before the offer could be completed. Furious, Loveland slapped him across the mouth, and in dodging the insult, Milton slipped on a morsel of thin ice which glazed the pavement. He staggered, tried to regain his balance, lost it finally, and fell flat upon his back.

Loveland felt suddenly as if he had been drenched with cold water. The man's fall, the stillness of the limp form which lay grotesquely, like a dummy made of rags, was a sight to chill even righteous anger. Loveland hadn't yet begun to think of himself or the danger he might be in. He thought of the man—who seemed to him hardly a man—and wondered if he were dead. Then, after a dazed instant, he bent down over the motionless form, and felt a great throb of relief when he saw no stain of oozing blood on the pavement. The fur lined collar of Milton's coat had been pulled up behind his ears and had broken the force of the fall for the back of his head on which, otherwise, he must have struck with terrible force. Already his thick eyelids were twitching. In another moment or two he would open them. And realising this, Val at last turned to that thought which generally came first: Lord Loveland and Lord Loveland's welfare.

He glanced hastily round, and assured himself that no one was near: no one could have seen the incident, which luckily for him had happened at some distance from a street lamp. He thought carefully but quickly. If anyone should come—if an alarm were given—if he should find himself in the hands of the police—that would be the worst thing that had happened yet.

This beast who lay there—this beast who had taken advantage of a stranger's misfortunes to try and bribe him to the basest dishonour—wasn't hurt half as badly as he deserved to be. Loveland was glad he had struck the wretch, and would do it again, if it had to be done again, pay for the satisfaction dearly as he might have to pay. But he did not see that there was need to pay at all. If the fellow complained to the police of his assault, Val couldn't defend himself by telling the truth, because Mrs. Milton's name must not be brought in. He did not admire her particularly, and he owed her no gratitude, but she was a woman; and suddenly he knew of himself that he would bear the worst that might befall him, rather than drag Mrs. Milton into a scandal.

For as long as he might have taken to count twelve, perhaps, Lord Loveland stood making up his mind and staring at the man on the ground: then he walked away as quickly as he dared.

How interminable the length of this cross-street seemed! He did not even know what street it was into which he had turned almost mechanically with Milton, as they talked, nor did it matter, if only he could get out, and far enough away before Milton came to himself, to gabble some malicious lie about what had happened.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Introducing Shakespeare

The end of the street, and no pursuing steps, nor shouts of accusing voices!

Once round the corner, Loveland breathed more freely; but with the white glint of his uncovered evening shirt, he was a marked man among men whose overcoats acknowledged winter, and his one anxiety for the moment was to get on as far as possible in as short a time as possible.

He had two or three small pieces of American money in his pocket, rather more than equal to the value of an English shilling, and he thought of hurling himself into a tearing electric car, or rushing up the steps of an "L" station to board the first train that should come in. But he did not know what destination to name, and feared that, if he professed indifference as to the end of the journey, he might arouse suspicion. It was wiser, he decided, to go on foot, dodging from the brilliantly lighted avenues into the darker cross-streets, and so on, indefinitely, until it seemed safe to call a halt.

Before the unexpected climax of his interview with Mr. Milton Loveland had still hoped for ultimate shelter and dinner, but now he ceased to regard either as a likely goal of his adventure. The great thing was, not to be caught by the New York police, and "run in" for assault, clapped into prison, into print, and forever out of the matrimonial court. The present was very bad, but there was hope for the future, although Milton's hints and strange manner had brought closer the cloud of dark presentiment until it pressed like a thick veil over Loveland's eyes.

When he found himself in the Plaza, and saw the black forest of the park billowing away into distance like the gulf of night, he looked towards it as a refuge. If only it were still open at this hour! If only he could get in!

His doubt died at birth; for a big motor car whizzed by him and into the velvet gloom. Evidently Central Park was not shut to the public at night.

Loveland followed the car; and though moving ghostlike along a tree-walled road, he had not quite the wished-for sense of being blotted out by darkness, it was good to escape from glaring lights and staring people.

When Loveland became accustomed to the gloom, it took on colour to his eyes, and turned from black to a deep, transparent blue which shimmered round him like the shadows of spirit forms; and far away where flared the lights of the "Great White Way" the dusk was beaten into sparks of flame as if a dying torch had been shaken down the sky. The blazing eyes of motor lamps, and yellow-winking carriage-lights moved along the dim drives, and drew the night in after them like a folding curtain.

Val turned out of a broad thoroughfare of the park into a quieter road to avoid the procession of vehicles and the faces that peered from their windows. There were no faces in the world that he wanted to see now, save his mother's—and Lesley Dearmer's, and he was ashamed of the longing which ached in him for those two.

"Buck up, you blighter," he admonished himself. "Don't be an ass or a baby."

It was easy to lash his soul with sage advice. But he felt very small and pitiful in the vast, unfriendly city, where it seemed that there were warm overcoats and good dinners for everybody except the Marquis of Loveland.

He strayed aimlessly along a winding way haunted by a melancholy fragrance of dying leaves, and a silence that rustled with scurrying thoughts which could never embody themselves in words.

In the great illuminated cañons of the New York streets electricity outshone the stars, and it was hard to tell whether the moon lived or died. But above the Park hung a sky like a bell, purple in its dome, and touched with metallic gleams at the rim where the earth-lights climbed. And bye and bye that purple paled slowly with the moon-dawn that sifted down in silver dust over the black trees, whitening the autumn mists that clung close to the grass like a face-cloth on the dead.

Loveland was bitterly cold now—cold all the way through to his heart—but he flung himself down on a bench under a low-branching tree, and wondered desolately if he had found his quarters for the night.

For a moment he had sat there, trying to marshal the routed army of his thoughts, before he realised that he was not alone on the seat. Something stirred at the far end where the shadow was deepest. There was a faint tinkle as of a fairy bell—a cracked fairy bell, and a tiny shape leaped from the bench. Loveland watched it flitting here and there, darting across the glimmering grey road, and then about to prick daintily back again when a motor swung round the curving corner.

The fragile sound of the bell was drowned, and the little shape would have gone under the fat-tyred wheels, to be swept into nothingness like chaff by the wind, had not Val sprung forward, and dashed across the road in front of the car, catching up the morsel in his rush.

He risked his life, but the lights of the car had shown him in one blinding flash that the frisking thing was a miniature black dog, no bigger than his hand; and Val loved dogs big and little with all that was best and warmest in him. Nothing could have tempted him to hurt a dog, or indeed any animal save those it was the legitimate sport of Englishmen to kill; and he could imagine himself murdering a man guilty of cruelty to any helpless creature.

The motor horn gave a shriek, and there was a grinding of brakes, jammed on with savage suddenness, but the car could not have stopped in time. It was only Loveland's quickness which saved him, and scarcely beyond touch of the tyres he stumbled, drawing up his knees to keep from being run over; but he had the tiny, beating body in his hand, held up out of harm's way.

"You fool! You'd have had yourself to thank if you'd been smashed!" growled the chauffeur, who was alone in the car. "And it's God's wonder you didn't make me skid smack into that bench."

Loveland, picking himself up, did not think it worth while to answer, and the chauffeur, who heard the arrival of a policeman unsympathetic to motor men, decided not to stop for further argument. With a parting grumble, he slipped away into the night; and Loveland, by this time on his feet, walked quietly across the road again with the cause of the disturbance quivering in his hand.

"That was a close shave for you, you little beggar," he said half aloud. "Who are you, I wonder, and where did you spring from?"

"Answers to name o' Shakespeare, and dropped out o' my pocket while I snoozed, I guess," said a voice from the shadow. "You bet I'm obliged to you for what you done. 'Twas fine."

Under the big tree that roofed the seat, moon rays dripped between branches like water that trickles slowly through holes in old netting. A man who had been huddled asleep on one corner of the bench was on his feet, holding out eager hands to take the dog from Loveland: a shabby figure even in the dim light, with a hatchet face thin as a new moon, that glimmered pale between the black blot of a frowsy hat and the inky blur of a turned-up coat collar. Val could make out the features but indistinctly, yet he caught the impression of a quaint, patient humourousness, as if a character sketch penned on white paper in three or four sharp black lines had been passed quickly before his eyes.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Shakespeare's Master

Lord Loveland's habit was to give a wide berth to common people, if Chance, the democrat, threw him near them, with the exception of "Tommies," who for him as a soldier were a class by themselves—a class in which he recognised humanity that touched his own. He did not love ugliness or shabbiness, which as like as not meant microbes; but he had come down so near to the depths of reality tonight, that he had no sense of his own superiority, or inclination to shrink away when the man's hands touched his as they took the rescued animal.

"I came along in the nick of time," said Loveland, "and I like dogs. I thought I could just do it, and I did."

"'Twas fine, all the same," repeated the dog's master. "I ain't much of a public speaker, but I guess you know how I feel, all right. 'Twould 'a pretty near put me out o' business if——" He did not finish his sentence, but the tenderness with which he tucked into his pocket the wretched little apology for a dog made further words superfluous.

Loveland, always polite to inferiors, unless overmastered by rage, looked at the bench as if it were the first comer's property.

"If you don't mind, I'll sit down," he said.

The shabby one laughed. "I ain't paid for my lodgings," said he, "and if I had, you'd be welcome—after what you done. You can have me for a doormat if you like."

"Thanks," said Loveland, laughing, too. "I don't need a doormat. If it was an overcoat, now——"

"You could have mine, if you weren't twice the size for it, and if Anthony Comstock wouldn't run me in if he saw what I've got on underneath. But I guess you wouldn't have to wish twice for a coat, if 'twas in your part."

"My part?" repeated Val.

"If the piece you're in called for it."

"I don't understand."

They were both sitting down now, filling the far corners of the bench, and talking across it.

"Well, 'tain't my show. I don't want to be fresh. But though I've seen a lot o' night-bloomin' plants growin' in this flower garden, I don't just recall seein' one like you take root."

"You wouldn't now, if I had anywhere else to go," returned Loveland, with his usual frankness.

"Gee! You take me for the fall guy. But say, do you want anything out o' me? 'Cause, if you do, you can have it. If you're a journalist out on a night stunt, and what you're fishin' for is the history o' my life, I'm on, for Shakespeare's sake. Any form you like, sad or gay, moral lesson or otherwise."

"Hang journalists!"

"Think so? Well, millionaire then, seein' how the poor live. You look the swell all right."

"Thank you. Wish I felt as I look, then."

"You'd make the Gould and Vanderbilt crowd look like visitors, if you hadn't forgot your overcoat."

"I left it at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel——"

"Sa—ay, if that ain't like me!" drawled the man, the twinkle of moonlight striking a humourous glint in his eye. "Kind of absent-minded. I left my Sunday suit just that way at the White House last week, where I'd been spending Saturday to Monday with my friend Willy T."

"You think I'm lying?" said Loveland, with curiosity rather than resentment.

"Just kiddin'."

"You're mistaken. They turned me out of the hotel——"

"Gee! But you was there?"

"Yes."

"If that ain't the swell thing! I wouldn't mind bein' turned out, if once they'd let me in. I should say to myself, 'Well, sir, you've lived.' That's what I never have done, but what I'm always meanin' to do, when my time comes. Say, would it be offensive if I asked why they—er——"

"Turned me out? I couldn't pay for my dinner."

"Had you eat it?"

"No. I wish now I had."

"I believe you. Whe—ew! Just to eat once at the Waldorf!"

"I had lunch there," said Val, beginning to be a little warmer, because he was amused.

"Bet it was bully."

"I wasn't hungry—then."

"Pity! Still," the man at the other end of the bench murmured reflectively, "you've got it to remember, and I guess a lot of other nice things."

"If that were any comfort!"

"'Twould be to me. Say, I don't throw myself out much to strangers, but you saved my dog for me, while I was snoozin' like a sick dormouse, and there's somethin' about you kind o' gets me. Suppose we swop stories,—if you really ain't on in this act. If you're not kiddin'—playin' some game—if you're here because you're stumped, why maybe I might put you up to somethin'—see? Wasn't there a verse in the Bible about a lion and a mouse?"

"I think the lion and the mouse were Æsop," said Val.

"Never heard of the gent. But anyhow, I caught on to it in Sunday School—when I was a kid, I'm dead sure of that, and I always was a quoter. You ain't a New Yorker, are you?"

"No. I'm an Englishman," Loveland answered quickly.

"Gee, but you're a swell-lookin' emigrant! I ain't a New Yorker myself—not by birth. I was a hayseed till I turned nineteen; workin' on my stepfather's farm—mean old skinflint, but I couldn't see my way to cuttin' till my mother was gone. Then I footed it to New York—sixty mile—chuck full of hope, and nothin' else, unless beans."

"A regular Mark Tapley," said Val.

"Never played the part. In private life my name's Bill Willing: some switches it round to Willing Bill, because I generally do my day's work without howlin'; I blew into New York without attractin' much notice, and that's nineteen years ago, and I haven't attracted much since, that's a fact. But you may do better. Don't be discouraged by a setback, if your game's square, and I bet it is, or you wouldn't be in the dog savin' business. What is your lay, anyhow?—excuse the liberty."

"Retrieving my fortune," said Val, after a moment's reflection.

"You can see me one better. Mine's to make yet, and I'm no kid—like you. I won't see thirty-eight again. I'm an artist. But New York ain't woke up to my talent. Maybe I've been too versatile. That never did pay. The line I'd mapped out was paintin' pictures, but my chance was slow comin'. Had to take what I could get on the way along: supin', sandwichin', barkin'——"

"Eh, what?" broke in Loveland.

"You don't savvy? Oh, supin' in theatres. There's several, specially one in the Bowery, wouldn't 'a been complete without me for years, till I got the chuck like you did at the Waldorf. Sandwichin'—why, you know what that is, sure? You wouldn't think how you get the cramps shut up between the boards? The sandwichin' was generally in the theatrical line, too, so I've always kind of hovered around the profession, though I don't say I'm proud of my career as a barker in the dimes—museums, you know. There was money in the business, though, if the freaks hadn't caught on that I had the heart of a soft boiled egg—always ready to part if they worked the aged mother dodge, or the baby brother who threw fits. I ain't no penny-in-the-slot savings bank. Wish I was. I should be better off now. Besides, my voice ain't an automobile horn, and barkin' for a couple of seasons stove a hole in my top note. After that, no manager would take me with a pound of tea and a chromo, but one of my old govs switched me onto a job paintin' freak showboards, and I'd 'a been at it yet if freaks didn't last too long. Once you've put them on the boards, there they are. At present my speciality's meenoos."

Val looked blank, thinking of emus.

"French for grub cards. A swell like you ought to be on to that. But I'm just thinkin' what there is for you. This stunt of mine I dropped into by luck. 'Twas Shakespeare introduced me—like he did to you tonight."

"Why Shakespeare?" Loveland cut in.

"Oh, there's a—a girl in that story: actress in the theatre where I suped—a real actress, mind you, a Fascinator from Fascinatorville. Why Lil so much as looked at me, I don't know—but she did. I was near twice her age, and 'twould have been playin' the game too low down to try and hook onto her, though I was tempted—she was so pretty, so good to me. I don't know what would 'a been the upshot, if the property man, who had his eye on the gal, hadn't got me the sack, and Lil an engagement on the road. She and I drifted apart. I never wrote, though she asked me to; I knew 'twas better not, for her. But you see why I'm nuts on the dog. He was hers, and Shakespeare was her name for him. She loved Shakespeare's plays, and her ambition was to act in 'em. But all that's somethin' I wouldn't 'a mentioned—if you hadn't kind of earned the right to Shake's history. I was tellin' you about my speciality, and how Shake introduced me to it. We was on our beam ends, Shake and me, our ribs showin' through the silk. One mornin' after a night out—like this, only in a square downtown, I was circulatin' around till I blew into Twelfth Street, and dropped my eyes onto a new restaurant, with a good fried smell, and an idea hit my brain like a hammer. In I walks and offers to swop it with the boss for a dinner. He wasn't takin' any just then, but I talked till I waked him up, showed him what I could do in the art line, and began to work on the spot with a grand new thing in meenoos. I've been at it ever since, and though the pay don't go up by leaps and bounds, the house has, and lots o' the eaters say it's my work's made it what it is—brought in the public like a flock of sheep. I get two meals and three dimes a day out of the job, and I wouldn't be sleepin' in my country house tonight, if I hadn't run acrost a guy who needed my money more than I did. Well, it's all in the day's work; and I guess there ain't many swells have got a finer palace than this, though it's kind of draughty. Your castle across the pond ain't got a finer park, I bet?"

"My castle's full of draughts, too," Loveland humoured him.

"So you came over here to get out of 'em?"

"Exactly."

"And that fortune you want to retrace, or retrieve. Wisht I could help."

"I'm expecting a cablegram in the morning, that will put me all right, thank you," said Loveland. "You're a good chap, and I'm glad to have met you, for you've—er—broadened my outlook, as well as passed the time. I've only to worry through till tomorrow."

"That's some hours off," said Bill Willing. "Wisht I could invite you to my hotel where I hang out when I'm not at my country place, but the trouble is to see the colour of your money, or you don't see the colour of their beds."

"How much is it for a room?" asked Loveland.

"Oh, a room! I don't run to a room. A bed in a vast wilderness is good enough for me. But a quarter'll get you one. Three nickels for a bed."

Loveland searched his pockets, and dubiously exhibited two silver coins mixed democratically with a few nickels and impotent looking little coppers. The prospect appeared hopeless to him, but Willing exclaimed with delight.

"Gee! Forty-five cents! You're a bloated millionaire. You might be asleep in two beds at the Bat Hotel, instead of cooling in this ice-cream freezer."

"If there's the price of two beds, you must have one," said Loveland.

"Thank you. You're the real stuff," returned Bill, gratitude in his voice. "But I'm O. K. where I am. You stick to your stamps. I know just how you feel. I'm always chuckin' my last cent away on some poor dickybird, thinkin' 'twill be all right tomorrow and what's the odds."

"There are no odds against me this time," Val assured him. "You've cheered me up no end, and you must share what I have. But about the hotel?"

"It's clean all right. Mayn't be the Plaza or the Waldorf, but no dive. It's warm, and the rooms are real natty."

"What about food?" asked Loveland. "Can we run to it?" and he glanced at the coins in his hand.

"Keep the change. We'll eat for nothing. Now's our time to join the Bread Line."

Again Val looked blank, and again it was necessary for Bill Willing—guide, philosopher and friend—to explain. There were, said he, two very important lines drawn every night in New York for the benefit of the poor: the Bread Line and the Bed Line. Each was drawn in a public square; the former in Herald, the latter in Madison; and both were traced by the finger of Charity.

The Bed Line, Bill did not often patronize, because he could generally pay for his own sleeping accommodation, and if he couldn't, there were always the Parks. Besides, the parson chap who spoke in Madison Square every night for the benefit of the poor, could collect only money enough to supply a limited number of men with beds. There was such a long line waiting, always, and the unlucky ones went away into the night looking so disappointed. Bill couldn't bear that, or the thought that one more must go bedless because he had got in ahead. As for the Bread Line, that was different. There was usually enough to feed the whole line, with coffee thrown in. It was a good show, too, and sometimes when Bill had separated himself from his last coin, and wanted a little cheerful company, he linked onto the Bread Line. Tonight they would both go. "Unless," added Mr. Willing, "you're afraid some o' your swell friends may spot you?"

Even if Loveland had been afraid, he would have denied the imputation. "You're the only friend, swell or otherwise, that I have in New York," said he.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Lights of New York

It seemed to Lord Loveland that he had never known how dazzling light could be, till the night-lights of New York flung their diamonds into his eyes.

Though it was nearly midnight when he emerged from behind the purple bed-curtains of the sleeping Park, there was no sign that less secluded quarters of the city thought of sleep.

The amazing jewels of the city still scintillated against the sky, flashing coloured fire. The Great White Way still blazed with brightness brighter than day: the huge plate-glass windows of shops closed to customers, advertised attractions for tomorrow. Electric cars were still crowded, going up and down. Overhead was a ceaseless rush and roar of elevated trains: and Herald Square, which the comrades reached by short cuts and devious ways known to the initiated, seemed the beating heart of the big, vital body whose diamond-crowned head was in the sky.

In the glass-sided palace of the "Herald," tomorrow morning's paper was visibly going to press. There was a chewing rumble of huge printing machines, and from somewhere out of sight of the bronze owls' staring, electric eyes sprang covered wagons loaded with "up-state" editions, which must catch early trains. Newsboys were yelling extras, trying to howl each other down above the confused storm of sound; and as "Willing Bill" towed his convoy into the Square, Minerva lifted her noble bronze arm to give the midnight signal. Her pair of obedient blacksmiths swung their hammers lustily, and struck the bell twelve times.

Val and his companion were nearly the last in a long procession of applicants for newspaper hospitality, and for the first time in his life Lord Loveland found himself among the dregs of humanity, learning what it might be to suffer as they suffered, they who seethed in the cauldron of the world's misery.

He had known that this sort of thing existed; that there were men and women who went hungry and thirsty, who slept out of doors, and who had no place on earth's surface which even for a night they might call their own; but he had been wont to skip paragraphs about them in the papers, and had always avoided brushing against a shabby person in a crowded street. He had never felt any tie of blood between himself and common men, except the Tommy Atkins who fought and died round him in South Africa. Yet these weary ones on whom the light of Herald Square blazed down, these men of hopeless, concave faces, beaten in by sin or sorrow, pressed near to Loveland's soul and waked some feeling in it which he had never known. It was as if his friend of the Park had initiated him into some strange, secret society, in joining which the bare fact of membership gave at once a mysterious sense of brotherhood. Val was surprised that he felt no repulsion against the ragged wretches who crowded round him. He did not draw himself away from them, or resent their lack of respect for him as a superior being. He was sorry for them all, with a consciousness of kinship, which, he thought, he would probably remember with amusement tomorrow.

"They think you're some fly reporter, takin' notes; or a swell doin' the night sights," said Bill. "They don't like you much. But they won't bother you neither, only some chap may say 'What queer things you see, when you haven't got your gun.' If he does, don't you take notice, that's all."

Loveland promised forbearance, but his patience was not tried. In his turn (which came when his nose had turned a pale lilac with cold, and the silk-clad insteps above his pumps were slowly congealing) he received a tin of hot coffee, and a roll. Food and drink were so good, and, as Bill said, "filled such a long-felt want," that Val bolted them greedily, only to yearn for more when both were gone. But etiquette was strictly preserved in Herald Square. No one asked for a second helping, and each applicant, when he had drained his coffee to the last drop, walked away without a word unless it were a "thank you."

"Now, ho for the Bat Hotel," exclaimed Bill cheerfully. "It's a goodish step; but as for me, after that grub, I feel like I could do a sprint round the world."

Loveland was refreshed, too, and more than ever inclined to look on the experience as an adventure over which he would laugh tomorrow night. But he did not intend to forget Bill Willing when he forgot the troubles through which Bill was his pilot. He must do something for the poor chap, he said to himself, and glowed with hot coffee and a sense of warm generosity.

Bill's hotel, it appeared, was situated in the Bowery. There were others more or less of the same sort, dotted about in various streets of far eastern and far western New York, but Bill would not guarantee these. "I ain't a top wave swell myself—yet," he said, "but dirt and I ain't friends, and I won't risk no menagerie for neither of us, nor Shakespeare either. I've raised him to be particular. He's that sad when he's made a public thoroughfare of by one or two o' them critters as boarded the ark in disguise, that he won't look me in the face."

Shakespeare, who had shared his master's roll, and lapped the last spoonful of coffee, was an incredibly small, black animal of somewhat moth-eaten texture, who in form rather resembled a grasshopper. He had a little sharp nose, which might have been whittled into shape with a penknife; his legs were too long for his tiny body, and not much thicker than a pencil; but his gentle eyes, curiously like his master's, beamed with affection, and he was turning grey in the flower of his youth, owing to the lava heat of his boiling emotions.

Loveland had visions of buying Shakespeare a red collar when he had cashed his letter of credit tomorrow; but with a sudden pang, he remembered a difficulty concerning that letter of credit which had not occurred to him before. He had wired to the bank in London in the afternoon, and given as his address the Waldorf-Astoria. After the way in which he had been treated, and the manner of his exit, it would be beneath his dignity to go back, on any errand whatever. He must send to the hotel for the cablegram which, it seemed certain, would arrive during the morning; also for the visiting cards which some of Jim and Betty Harborough's friends were sure to leave after calling and finding him gone. Perhaps some of these cards would make the hotel people regret the error of their ways. But apologies would be in vain. He would go to the Plaza, or the Belmont——

"We approach the castle doors, me lord," grandiloquently announced Bill, little guessing that his jesting way of address was that to which Loveland was accustomed from his inferiors.

Val started from the reverie in which he had been walking at his companion's side like a mechanical figure. He waked to find himself in a brilliantly illuminated street, like a tenth-rate imitation of Broadway, lined with lighted shops, gaudy restaurants and strange houses of entertainment.

"This is the Bowery," Bill mentioned with pride.

The Bowery? English Loveland had vaguely expected a gentle suburb of trees and flowers, such as American Bill might have pictured Bloomsbury. And as Willing knew naught of the pleasant "Bouweries" of old Dutch days, he had no explanation to mitigate his companion's disillusionment.

They passed a tall building whose red front was pictorial with advertisements of Wonders such as the world could not have survived had it seen them in the flesh.

"My old pitch," said Bill. "I painted the Fat Twins with their heads under their arms, and the Half-Zebra-Half-Camel. The Fair One with Golden Locks, too, and the Human Bone are my Shay Doovers. What do you think of 'em, chum?"

"Chum" was filled with respectful admiration of the artist's imagination, if not of his technique, and he replied fervently that the Shay Doovers in question were marvellous.

"Here's where I used to bark," went on Bill with a sigh for past glories. "They'd ought to give us free passes for a look round, if you'd like, but the Boss ain't built that way, and there's nothing to see anyhow. The Freaks ain't what they're painted. Couldn't be, for a dime."

Loveland answered that no doubt the pictures were the best part of the show, which pleased the artist, and they walked on, Bill blasé, Val interested to the point of self-forgetfulness. A few doors to the left, after passing a shooting gallery and a drinking saloon which called itself a café, Mr. Willing paused in front of a tall building which loomed up dingy and ill-lighted in comparison with its gaudy neighbors. A lamp over a low-browed door drew sufficient attention to the announcement, printed in faded lettering, that this was "The Bat Hotel. For Gentlemen Only."

Bill Willing opened the door as if he were at home, as indeed he was, for "The Bat" had been his headquarters, more or less, for years. He sometimes paid in advance for a week, or weeks, at a time, and then the same bed and locker were scrupulously reserved for him; but he had been a little irregular lately, owing to his many promiscuous charities.

"Come in, do," he said hospitably, and Loveland obeyed, to find himself standing directly at the foot of a long, dimly lit stairway, the steps of which were protected from the wear and tear of time and boots by strips of iron.