Lord Loveland Discovers America

								

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