"I don"t remember, I"m sure," replied Lesley, beginning to scrawl the name of "Loveland" aimlessly across the top of the page which ought by this time to have been covered with brilliant conversation between her hero and heroine. She answered in an indifferent tone, almost as if she were thinking of something else; but if her mind had indeed been properly bent on the story, she would have said: "Auntie, darling, I"m a thousand miles away, please, with d.i.c.k and Susanne. Don"t bring me back, there"s a dear!"
"Well, I"m glad you didn"t take much interest in him," went on Mrs.
Loveland, in a tone pregnant with mystery and importance. "I know I oughtn"t to be talking to you when you"re at work, and I don"t often, do I?"
"Not _very_ often," smiled Lesley, her dimples softening the gentle little reproach, if it were a reproach. But she didn"t look up at her aunt. She pretended to be writing on; and so she was. But it was only one word, over and over again, that she wrote: "Loveland--Loveland." And her heart had begun to beat in a hurried, warning way, as often it had on shipboard when she heard Loveland"s voice, and wondered if he were coming to talk to her--or to some other girl.
"But this is something really very special," Aunt Barbara apologised.
"It"s quite exciting. Only fancy having known him! I almost wish you"d pointed him out to me that last morning on board, when I was up on deck.
It would be interesting to remember what he was like."
"Is there something about him in the paper?" asked Lesley, who had been expecting news, but would have preferred to read it herself, if she could have chosen.
"I should think there was!" exclaimed her aunt, screened behind the great printed sheets again.
"Is he engaged already?" Lesley enquired, making a sketch of Lord Loveland"s profile in the midst of a speech of d.i.c.k"s, though d.i.c.k was a very different sort of young man from Loveland, a very different sort indeed. How many times she had caught herself tracing the outline of those features--so clear, so straight, so perfect an outline, that it was as easy to draw as to copy a Greek statue. She knew every line, and often the little profile-portrait was there before her eyes on the paper before she knew what she had been doing. She was almost perfectly certain what Aunt Barbara"s answer to her question would be. Of course he was engaged. He had hardly had time to make the acquaintance of any new girls in New York, and propose marriage, so it must be Elinor Coolidge--or f.a.n.n.y Milton.
"Engaged!" echoed the elder. "No, indeed. What a mercy he"s been found out before some nice girl was mixed up in the scandal. Of course he wanted----"
"A scandal!" Now at last Lesley did lift her head, quickly, and the last profile-sketch looked as if it had been struck by lightning.
"Shocking," answered Mrs. Loveland. "What a dreadful thing that our country should be looked upon as a sort of gold mine by these foreign birds of prey."
Lesley"s little ears burned pink as if her aunt had boxed them. Her eyes sent out a spark, but its fire was quenched in a sudden trickle of nervous laughter. "Dear Aunt Barb! Would "birds of prey" make successful miners?"
Aunt Barbara laughed, too. "You"re always catching me up for my similes," she said. "But luckily I don"t write stories, so it doesn"t matter. And anyway that"s what they _are_; birds of prey. As for what they do, they marry our girls, who find them out too late, and then try to get divorces. What an escape for some poor little heiress, that this creature is hoist with his own petard in the very midst of baiting his wicked trap! You needn"t look at me like that, child. I don"t care _how_ mixed up I am. Did this man look like a gentleman?"
"Yes," said Lesley. "Naturally, because he is a gentleman."
"My dear! he must have been clever to hoodwink an observant little thing like you, who can see right down into people"s hearts, even when you hardly seem to be noticing how they do their hair, or the colour of their neckties. This man is nothing but his own valet."
"So am I my own maid," said Lesley. "He never said he was rich, or----"
"I mean he isn"t a Marquis."
The soft outline of the girl"s figure stiffened, and she sat up very straight on the sofa.
"Who says he isn"t a Marquis?" she asked sharply.
"Everybody. The newspaper."
"Oh--the newspaper!"
"But it"s true. He"s been turned out of his hotel. I"ll read you the----"
"Please, I think I"ll read it myself, if you don"t mind, dear," said Lesley. "That is--when you"ve finished. I can wait."
"I have finished, all I care about reading," Mrs. Loveland hastened to a.s.sure her, for she invariably discovered that she has ceased to want anything which Lesley could even be suspected of wishing for.
"Take the paper, dear. Don"t get up. I"ll bring it to you."
But Lesley did get up, and stood with her back to her aunt as she read the Louisville version of Tony Kidd"s sensational "story." She took a long time to read it, and when she had come to the end, she laid the paper on her aunt"s lap without saying a word.
"Well--has it struck you dumb?" exclaimed Mrs. Loveland, disappointed: for if she spoiled Lesley with petting, Lesley spoiled her with responsiveness.
"I am rather horrified," said the girl.
"No wonder. You actually knew him--or thought you did."
"I think so still."
"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 f.a.n.n.y 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 t.i.tle 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."