Lord Loveland Discovers America

								

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.