Lord Loveland Discovers America

								

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 d�butantes, 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