Act 5: The husband and father of the two ladies, whom "Lord Loveland

met on the _Mauretania_, attacked and knocked down in the street, by the "Difficult Young Man to Approach."

* * * * *

Now, at last, Loveland understood everything that had happened to him in New York, even to the mystery of the bank. Again he seemed to see Cadwallader Hunter bending to talk with the good-looking, dark young man who had dined with the Coolidges. Mr. van Cotter had doubtless been one of those who had received the warning cablegrams, and naturally he had passed on the interesting news to the Coolidges and Miltons. Cadwallader Hunter, who had stopped to chat with the party, had been just in time to glean the information, and had taken revenge for the Englishman's rudeness of the morning by advising the hotel people to get rid of an undesirable client.

Oh, yes, it was easy enough to see it all now, even the reason why his mother and the London bankers had failed to answer his appeals for money. They had thought that Foxham was cabling, and had accordingly refused to be taken in. Apparently Foxham had absconded--somewhere--and his misdoings had been discovered on the other side before his late master had found him out. Perhaps Foxham had taken the ticket for the _Baltic_ which he--Val--had instructed him to sell, and used it for himself, booking as a passenger for America in the name of Lord Loveland.

In that case the fellow had doubtless arrived in New York by this time, on the _Baltic_--the ship on which his master had originally intended to sail; and Heaven alone knew what new mischief he might have been working on this side of the water.

The thought of what might have happened was almost as infuriating as the knowledge of what certainly had happened. It all came from accepting the chance offered by Jim Harborough to sail on the _Mauretania_; but in spite of everything he had suffered, Loveland told himself that he would not have it different. If he had come over on the _Baltic_ he would probably by this time be engaged to some American heiress, and would never have met Lesley Dearmer.

Just now, his acquaintance with her, combined with all the other extraordinary results of his sailing on the _Mauretania_, was putting him to the torture; and he was gloomily convinced that nothing would ever make things come right; nevertheless, he was dimly, subconsciously aware even in this bitter moment that he wouldn't choose release from torture at the price of not knowing the girl.

"All this is a surprise to you, then?" her voice broke into the midst of his reflections over the newspaper cutting.

"Completely."

"How very odd that you didn't read the papers," exclaimed Lesley.

"I was so disgusted with the way New York was treating me that I wasn't very keen to see what it was saying of me. Besides, as I told you, I thought I _did_ know. I supposed it was all about the hotel fuss, and my knocking down that man Milton."

"Why _did_ you knock him down?"

"I slapped him in the face, and he fell down."

"But why did you slap him in the face?"

"I can't tell you that, Miss Dearmer."

"Well," said Lesley, looking at him always from under her lashes to see how he was taking her words, "you've been dreadfully punished, at all events."

"I don't think I deserved punishment for that."

"Don't you? Of course I don't know anything about _that_, but you used to be--well, rather arrogant."

"I'm not arrogant now." Loveland smiled faintly. "I'm almost inclined to think I never shall be again."

"If you're not really Lord Loveland----"

"Not really----" He almost gasped, as he would have repeated her words. It had not occurred to him, even while he read the cutting, that Lesley Dearmer could possibly think him a fraud. "What--you--you--don't believe in me?" he stammered. "_You?_"

Apparently she was untouched by the reproach, the actual consternation in his voice.

"Why should _I_ believe, more than anyone else?" she asked with a little dainty, sidewise turn of her head. "I was only a ship acquaintance, you know--like the others."

"Like the others who threw me over," he said.

"Yes, like the others. There was no difference--was there?" she challenged him.

But Loveland was in no mood to take up the gauntlet, if it were a gauntlet that she threw down.

"I suppose not," he answered from the depths.

"You valued almost all your other acquaintances on board more than you did me," the girl went on. "You were quite frank about that. By your own admission, you were a bit of an adventurer, coming over to my country to see what you could devour. I used to hate that in you--all the more because I thought you a _titled_ adventurer. There was less excuse for a well brought up man, with every advantage of birth and education, than for----"

"Say it, Miss Dearmer. Say what you really think of me."

"I don't say I do think it. I say only, why should _I_ believe in you, when other people don't?"

"I see now, there's _no_ reason. And I'm not going to ask you to believe."

"You're not going to assure me that you are the real Lord Loveland?"

"No, I'm not. I'm not going to assert myself, or defend myself in any way--to you. I want you to draw your own conclusions."

"Very well," said Lesley, with sparkling eyes. "I do draw them."

"May I ask what they are?"

"You may ask, but I'm not going to answer your question just now. There are other questions to attend to, which we've dropped for this subject. About 'Lord Bob,' for instance."

"I've no excuse to offer, even for stealing your friend's play, except that--we were hard up, and we saw nothing else to do."

"Your people in England, if----"

"I've had no answer to my cablegrams. There's no time for answers to have come to letters, yet."

"I see. Meanwhile?----"

"Meanwhile, we're on our beam ends."

"You say 'we.' You identify yourself with these people--these poor little stranded actors?"

"Oh, yes, I'm one of them. A poor little stranded actor, too."

"You're not going to desert them?"

"No. We'll sink or swim together. You see, I've got rather fond of two of the 'poor little stranded actors'--my companions in misery; Ed Binney, who's very ill, really, and oughtn't to be acting--a good fellow, if ever there was one; and Miss de Lisle, the star----"

Lesley's face changed slightly, and her lips opened, but she did not speak.

"Who will perhaps some day marry a great friend of mine in New York."

"Oh! So you have a friend in New York?"

"Yes, one. He paints menus in the Twelfth Street Restaurant where I was a waiter."

"How you have changed!" exclaimed Lesley. "But perhaps it's only circumstances?"

"Perhaps," said Loveland.

"If I knew a way in which you could help your actor friends to escape from here and go--wherever they want to go, would you take it, I wonder?" asked the girl.

"I don't wonder. I'm sure," Loveland answered, thinking of poor little Lillie, "Bill's gal," and Ed Binney.

"It's a way that would be very 'infra dig,'" Lesley hesitated.

Loveland laughed. "What is 'infra dig'? I've forgotten."

"Oh, if you have, I'll tell you the way at once, and perhaps that will bring it back to your memory. Would you care to take a position in somebody's house as--as--well, a paid position with an advance on your salary, by which you could send all your friends happily away?"

"I'd do it like a shot--if anyone would have me," Loveland said quickly.

"Someone _will_ have you--shall we say, as secretary? Do you know typewriting or shorthand?"

Loveland reluctantly answered that he did not.

"Dear me! The secretaryship won't answer then, I'm afraid. Are you anything of a linguist?"

"Can't speak a word of any language but my own--except a hotch potch of French. The little Latin I ever had is practically gone."

"What a pity! Are you good at mathematics?"

"I generally add up on my fingers. Never could remember the multiplication table."

"History, then? Could you help a friend of mine who's writing a novel on the fifteenth century?"

"All I know about the fifteenth century, that I can think of at this moment, is that it wasn't the fourteenth--or the sixteenth. Oh, I'm afraid I'm no good, after all, Miss Dearmer. You'll have to give me up as a bad job, and chuck me into gaol for the theft of Cremer's play. I've never had any proper education."

"Haven't you? I'm not so sure about that," said Lesley, with an inflection in her voice that Val couldn't quite understand. "And I'm not sure you haven't learnt your lesson rather well."

"Which one?" enquired Loveland, ruefully; but she could not have understood the question, for she went on talking as if it had not been asked.

"You must be able to do _something_," she said, her dimples well in control.

"You've seen that I can't act, but--well, I can shoot pretty straight."

"Ah, I don't know anyone who keeps a shooting gallery."

"And ride decently."

"Nor anyone who wants a riding master. Oh, but--now can you drive a motor-car?"

"Yes," said Loveland.

"Good. Do you understand the mechanism of cars?"

"Of two or three. As well as--or better than most chauffeurs, I think, if that isn't being conceited again."

"I'm not finding fault with you tonight for conceit. Would you take quite a temporary job as chauffeur, in--in a private family, with a sal--oh, I might as well say wages! of $25 a week and your board and lodging besides?"

"If I could get the first week in advance, I might send everybody to Chicago--with what we've got out of the stolen play," Loveland said.

"Never mind the stolen play. In Sidney Cremer's name, I forgive you all, now I know the circumstances. No more to be said about that."

"You must know him very well indeed, to speak for him so positively," broke in Loveland, gloomily.

"I do," said Lesley. "You can have the first week's wages in advance, and the second, too. The car's a Gloria."

"My last was a Gloria."

"You mean--Lord Loveland's?"

"Oh, yes, I mean Lord Loveland's. Some men do make chauffeurs of their valets and vice versa. And you know, the real Loveland was hard up--or thought he was. I begin to see now, that he didn't know what being hard up meant."

"Even English peers can live and learn--while they're young, I suppose," said Lesley, meditatively. "But we were talking about you, weren't we? Do you accept the situation I offer you?"

"_You_ offer?"

"Well, for my friend, Sidney Cremer. Sidney has just bought a new car, and sent it to us. I'm allowed to use it for awhile, as much as I like."

"He's coming, then?"

"We expect Sidney to be with us for some time--with my aunt and me."

"I'm hanged if I'll be his servant!" Val exclaimed, with something of his old vehemence.

"Oh! Very well, Mr. Gordon. I thought you were really in earnest, or I wouldn't have made the suggestion."

"So I am. But----"

"There's often a '_but_' in such cases, isn't there? I admit it wouldn't be a particularly agreeable position for a man who has--er--"

"Posed as a peer," Loveland finished for her, bitterly.

"You put the words into my mouth. I was going to say--you seemed so anxious to do something to help the others, and this is the only thing I can think of by which you could make money quickly and----"

Ed Binney's pale face and Lillie's wistful eyes seemed to float in the air before the unhappy Loveland. "Very well," he said, "I will be Mr. Cremer's chauffeur. I've taken his play. I'll take his money; I'll take his food; I'll live under his roof, and I'll serve him as well as I can. And I'll only ask you to believe one decent thing of me, Miss Dearmer: that it isn't for my own sake."

"It will be my food you eat," said Lesley, sweetly. "And my roof which will give you shelter."

Loveland drew in his breath hard, as they looked at each other. Yes, it would be her roof, and her food. That was the worse for him, because it made it more and more plain that Sidney Cremer must be very near and dear to her.

"It's quite settled, then?" she asked pleasantly.

"It's quite settled," he echoed. "For a fortnight."

There were no dimples at play in Lesley's cheeks; but one might almost have said that her eyes laughed.