Lord Loveland Discovers America

"Why – did you suspect at all?"

"Nothing that I don't suspect now. Poor fellow!"

"'Poor!' Dearest, that's carrying soft-heartedness too far. Think – if he'd married some girl."

"I have often thought of it."

"What must Mrs. Milton and Fanny be feeling?" went on Mrs. Loveland. "Friends on the ship – and now he knocks down the husband and father in the street, because – "

"Ah, yes, because of what?" echoed Lesley.

"Mr. Milton says – "

"I read what he said. But his photograph is in the paper."

"What has that got to do with it?"

"Nothing, unless one's interested in physiognomy."

"I don't know anything about physiognomy," said Mrs. Loveland.

"Neither do I," said Lesley, "except what I was born knowing."

"Well, dear, I don't think I'd talk to any of our friends about having met this dreadful impostor," Aunt Barbara suggested, gently. "People might fancy, if you did, that there'd been – oh, some little shipboard flirtation, perhaps, nothing serious, of course, but – "

"So they might," admitted the girl. "I didn't think at the time, myself, that it was anything serious."

"I should hope not!" breathed Aunt Barbara. "A valet!"

"Marquis or Valet?" murmured Lesley, with a quaint little smile. "It sounds like the title of an old-fashioned story."

"For goodness' sake don't use it," begged her aunt. "The material isn't worthy of you."

"Oh, my stories are always new-fashioned," said Lesley. "You know, the critics reproach me for running ahead of the times in my ideas."

"You certainly are rather unexpected," replied Mrs. Loveland. "Sometimes I almost wish you were a tiny – just a tiny bit more conventional."

"You wished it when I said 'poor fellow.'"

"Oh, but you didn't really mean that."

"I did," persisted Lesley. "I should be disappointed in myself if I thought I could fail to recognise a valet when I saw one. And I hate being disappointed – in anyone."

"It must be disappointing to an author – one who has to be a student of character," assented Aunt Barbara, soothingly.

"Even when she's forgotten all about that part of herself for awhile, owing to – interruptions."

The dovelike little lady looked hurt. "Oh, my dear, I do beg your pardon!" she cried. "Of course I know, at this time of day – I'm only in the library on sufferance."

"I didn't mean you, Auntie," said Lesley, kissing her.

"Not me? Who, then – "

"But I really ought to write."

"I do hope I haven't taken your inspiration away, dearest."

"No. You've given me one."

"I'm so glad. Well, I'll run away now. I've lots of things to see to. Forget all about the Marquis of Loveland – I mean the valet. Put him out of your mind."

"Don't worry, Auntie. It's quite easy to put a valet out of a tidy, well-regulated little mind like mine."

"Think of Dick," said Mrs. Loveland. "He's going to be a splendid fellow."

"Dick's a paper doll," said Lesley.

Perhaps it was because she was not in a mood to play dolls that, when Aunt Barbara was gone, Lesley did not go back to her sofa and her story writing. She picked up the paper which Mrs. Loveland had left lying on the table, but she did not read. She merely looked at Mr. Milton's photograph. Then she went to the desk where she kept papers, and took a cheque-book from a drawer.

"No, that won't do," she said to herself, after thinking for a minute. She put the cheque-book back in its place, and opened another drawer, not locked, for neither drawers nor cupboards nor hearts were ever locked in this old-fashioned Kentucky house.

The second drawer was full of greenbacks. Perhaps it was a kind of savings bank for the young author; but, poor or rich, authors are proverbially easy about parting with their earnings, and Southern-born Lesley was no exception to the rule.

She counted out a number of bills – (more than half) – folded them up in a blank sheet of paper, torn off the writing pad, that there might be no address upon it, and pressed the flattened parcel into a large, stout envelope. This she sealed with blue sealing wax, and after a moment or two of puzzled reflection, began to print, in big black letters:

"The Marquis of Loveland

Waldorf-Astoria Hotel

New York

To be sent immediately to present address."

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The Marquis of Twelfth Street

It was Isidora who found out first what was in her father's mind, because she saw the advertisement which Alexander the Great had written for the papers. It lay on the parlour table, in clear black and white for any eye to read, when Isidora came to clear away the litter of odds and ends that Emmie the "hired girl" might lay the dinner things.

"Oh, Pa!" she gasped. "Is that what you're going to do?"

"Of course," said Alexander the Great, staring at her over his spectacles, as he wiped his pen and pushed his chair from the table. "Tell that gel to hurry up. Don't she know by dis dat I've got just twenty minutes for dinner? I'll have to go before dessert, if she don't get busy."

"You want to change the subject, Pa," said Isidora.

"No, I don't. Why for? 'Tain't your business."

"'Twas me had the idea. He won't stand bein' advertised."