Lord Loveland Discovers America

								

glad to claim acquaintance with this girl and her handsome father; but
though they were warmly greeted again and again, the girl maintained a
cool dignity not unworthy of Betty Bulkeley's mother, the Duchess of
Stanforth.
Val said to himself that the Mater would be pleased with a
daughter-in-law of this type, and that such a girl would never make her
husband ashamed. He could not imagine falling in love with her hard
brilliance; but then he wasn't going to America to fall in love. His
intentions were strictly businesslike. And this girl was bound to be
admired everywhere. She would look an ideal hostess, entertaining house
parties at Loveland Castle, when her money had restored it to all and
more than its ancient splendour.
Loveland's second choice might have been his first, for some reasons,
and in fact she was his first by impulse; only she did not look as
obviously an heiress as the other. Neither was she so obviously a
beauty; yet her charm leaped at the beholder with the briefest glance,
especially if that beholder were a man; leaped at him through his eyes,
and thrillingly through his nerves, in a mysterious, indescribable,
curiously interesting way.
She was not very tall, and she was a slim slip of a creature, not in the
least like a fashion plate, but suggestive of soft natural curves, even
in her navy-blue tailor-made frock.
If she had been stage-struck, and had asked for a chance in the chorus,
a theatrical manager would have found himself giving it to her, he
hardly knew why, more because she said she wanted it than on the
strength of her voice, or form, or features. Then, having yielded so far
to her magnetism, he would have said to himself, "She isn't striking
enough for the front row, or even the second. She must go into the
third." And there she would have gone docilely. Yet the critics and all
other men with eyes would have picked her out; and presently she would
have been more noticed than the beauties in the front row. By and by,
when there arose a little part with a few lines to speak, she would
have got it; and at last, in some way or other, it would have been she
who was making the "hit of the piece."
Lord Loveland did not say anything of this sort to himself, but he felt
a faint electric shock of interest every time they passed and repassed
each other; though after the first she did not look at him, with the big
brown eyes that surely had the prettiest, most bewitching lashes ever
seen.
Really, they were charming eyes. If nothing else were actually beautiful
about the girl, her eyes undoubtedly were exquisite. They were very
soft, and no man could look into them even for half a second in passing
without realizing deliciously that they were a woman's eyes; yet they
were not coquettish, except for that piquant effect of the curled
lashes. They were full of sympathy and intelligence, and gazed frankly,
sweetly out at the world, as if they could understand, and laugh or cry