Lord Loveland Discovers America

								

must be resources we can call upon--if we could only think of them."
"I have called on several people's resources, without any good coming of
it." Loveland grinned faintly, though he was in the depths of
depression, and had suffered from insomnia for at least a week, between
eight and ten in the morning, when so popular a young man should (in his
own opinion) have been dreaming of last night's pleasures, instead of
worrying how to pay for them.
"There is surely a last resort," went on Lady Loveland.
"Miss Mecklenburg was mine--and she's failed me--thank Heaven!"
"There must be something else."
"Something still worse?"
"Don't be flippant, dearest. I can't concentrate my thoughts when you
are. Ah, if we could have let Loveland Castle as well as we did twelve
years ago!"
"It's crumbled a lot since. And we're too poor to repair ourselves, let
alone our castles."
"You at least don't need repairing," said his mother, gazing at her son
with admiration. "You're the handsomest young man in the Kingdom."
Loveland laughed, though he believed her. As a child he had been kissed
by all his mother's prettiest friends, because he was so absurdly
beautiful, and so precocious. If he had been a plain or stupid boy he
might have grown up to be an estimable young man, as Marquises go. "Why
don't you say, 'in the world'?" he asked.
"I'm not a woman to exaggerate, dearest. All the Lovelands have been
good-looking. One has only to go into the picture gallery at the Castle
to see that----"
"Yes. As we can't sell their portraits."
"If we could, your father would have done it when he sold the Town
house. But you will be so confusing, Val. My argument is, that as you're
the best looking and the cleverest----"
"I don't know a blessed thing, my dear ladyship. Never had any
education. You ought to have sent me to Eton, instead of coddling me up
with tutors and----"
"You didn't think so then. I remember well when it was proposed, you
flung yourself on the floor and howled."
"So of course that settled it."
"Why, yes. You generally settled things like that. You had such a
determined way, dear. But you were born knowing more than many
studious, uninteresting young men have forgotten. Then, your South
African career! It was like a romance. You, who had been crammed, oh,
ever so little, for Sandhurst, and then left there to go to the war when
you were a mere child, hardly nineteen--so brave! And then, the Thing
you did on the battlefield! Of course you ought to have had the Victoria
Cross, but as it was, the newspapers rang with your praises, and I was
besieged for your photographs to publish. That deed alone would have
made you a personage of consideration, even without your rank."
"I've told you lots of times, Mater, the whole thing was a sort of
accident. I couldn't bear the chap. If I'd stopped to think, I don't
believe I'd have run back a step to drag him out from under fire. But I