"I owe so much already, I may as well owe a little more."

"Val, dear, I asked you not to joke. It confuses me. And I need to concentrate all my ideas upon one point. Let me see. Yes! _The pink pearls!_"

"The pink what?" asked Loveland, startled.

"I still have them. The double rope, you know."

"I know. Another beastly heirloom."

"Still, one can p.a.w.n heirlooms. Your bride can redeem it--and the other things. I've always saved the pink pearls for a great emergency. This _is_ a great emergency. Battenborough ought to give seven or eight hundred. And though seven or eight hundred, as you say, wouldn't go far among the debts, they might send you to America and back."

"I'll have to throw a few sops to Cerberus, if I want new clothes to impress the American girls," laughed Val. "That brute Deedes won't give me so much as a waistcoat unless he gets something on account."

"Pay him something," said Lady Loveland. "Pay what you must. Keep what you can--for yourself. As for me, I want nothing."

"Except a rich daughter-in-law," finished her son, his spirits rising though the snow still fell. After all, it was only October, and there was sunshine elsewhere. In America perhaps it was now shining on his bride to be! "I'll write to Betty about the letters," he said, "after you've given me some tea."

CHAPTER TWO

Between Betty and Jim

One of Loveland's most easily detected virtues was his careless habit of telling the truth. He had never lied, or even fibbed whitely, as a small boy, an idiosyncrasy which had often seriously inconvenienced his mother and other relations whose pet failings or economies he had ruthlessly exposed. But Lady Betty Bulkeley had always maintained that this bold truthfulness of her cousin's was the result of inconsiderateness rather than n.o.bility of soul.

She said (and she ought to have known, as she had been acquainted with him since she was two, and he eight, years old) that he did not bother to think of polite fibs, simply because the feelings of others were not for him of enough importance to seem worth saving at the cost of mental effort. Besides, according to Betty, Val took an impish delight in shocking people. As for blurting out the truth about his own affairs, the habit sprang from that impishness, in idle moods, and a sublime indifference to public opinion in serious states of mind. Now, in his letter to Betty asking for introductions, he made no attempt to cover his real intentions with the roses of pretty fiction.

He let it appear plainly that he thought his cousin, having visited America and s.n.a.t.c.hed a millionaire from the matrimonial grab-bag, ought gladly to help him succeed in the same game.

"The wretch!" said Betty, in the midst of reading Loveland's brutally frank letter to Jim, her American trophy, "I believe he has the impudence to think I married you for money! I'd like to shake him, and box his silly, conceited ears."

"They may be silly and conceited, but they're exactly the shape of yours, darling, so I couldn't find it in my heart to box them, no matter how much good it might do their owner," said Jim Harborough, who had been Betty's husband for nearly a year, and was joyously watching her triumphs as a young married woman.

Naturally Betty kissed him for this speech, as they were at breakfast alone together, the servants banished.

"Well, anyway, we won't give him the letters," she said when she had gone back to her own place--not far away.

"Won't we?" asked Jim, with a thoughtful air.

"No, certainly not," returned Betty. "I like your country-women, and I won't deliberately let Loveland loose to prey upon them."

"I 'guess' they can take care of themselves," said Jim, putting on his Yankiest accent.

"I don't know. Some of them might fall in love with him," suggested Betty doubtfully. "He's awfully good-looking, with a kind of winning, boyish way, and--a voice that's far too nice to express him, really. One often feels too lenient with Val, as if he were one of one's own pet weaknesses come alive and walking about."

"As for his looks, he's more like you than your own brother is," said Jim, "eyes, dimples, curly hair and all; so you wouldn't want me to hate him, would you? And as for his voice, it's occurred to me that maybe it expresses something in his _real_ self--the hidden self that he and n.o.body else knows anything about--the self he's never had a chance to develop or find out, because his mother and other people have spoiled him from his babyhood."

"That's very subtle of you, Jim, as well as very kind--and like you,"

said Betty. "I wish I could think it's true, as he's my cousin. But thank goodness, I for one never spoiled him. I scratched his face once when I was a small girl, and I'm glad. I wish it had left a mark."

"It would have been even a more honourable scar than the one South Africa gave him. But I admit, he is rather an unlicked cub,--at present.

I pity the girl who falls in love with him--as he now is."

"Always was and probably ever will be, Loveland without end," finished Betty, flippantly. "The _cheek_ of him, expecting me to ask you for letters, so that he can go over to your country and do his best to make some nice American girl miserable for life--and spend all her money. I shall punish him--since I can't do anything worse--by telling him exactly what I think of him."

"There are other ways of punishing him--more fitting to the crime, perhaps," remarked Jim, thoughtfully.

"What ways?"

"Giving him the letters."

"Jim!"

"And then--and then--well, a lot depends upon whether he's a _born_ egoist, or merely a made one. I haven't quite worked out the idea yet.

It's simmering--it'll soon begin to boil."

Whether Jim Harborough's idea had already boiled or not, at all events that same afternoon a fat envelope went out by post, registered, and addressed to The Marquis of Loveland, Cragside Lodge, Dorloch, N. B. In it there were at least ten letters of introduction, all to names the bare mention of which had power to raise the circulation of Society papers in America, or create a flutter in Wall Street. Each envelope enclosed in the big one was left open, so that Loveland might acquaint himself with the terms in which his cousins described him to their millionaire friends.

Perhaps he was slightly aggrieved that they did not paint him in more glowing terms, or dwell upon the honour conferred on the recipients of the letters. But there was no real fault to find, and--as Jim would perhaps have said--it was "up" to Loveland to make his own impression.

On the whole, Val was satisfied with what he had got, and condescendingly wrote two lines of thanks to Betty.

CHAPTER THREE

The Inestimable Foxham

Times were bad, said Battenborough, the polite and popular p.a.w.nbroker; therefore Lady Loveland got only six hundred pounds on the pink pearls.

Two hundred were sprinkled about among Val's creditors, like pepper out of a pot, where such seasoning was necessary. A hundred more were spent outright, with heartburnings, upon obstinate tailors, hatters and hosiers, who would not tail, hat nor hose, except upon instalments of ready money. Fifty pounds were apologetically retained by Lady Loveland, who grudged every penny to herself and especially to her servants.

Another fifty a little more than paid for a cabin almost worthy of his lordship on the big ship _Baltic_. Fifty and some vague dust of gold and silver went into Val's pocket for current expenses; and the remaining hundred and fifty condensed into the form of a letter of credit.

Of course there ought to have been more, much more. But there would have been less had not Loveland's man, Foxham, given notice at the last moment. This inestimable person a.s.sured his master that nothing but the most urgent necessity could have induced him to take such a course. He suffered poignantly, Foxham intimated with proper respect, in the idea that another must perform for his lordship those services which had been his pleasure and duty; but Foxham's grandfather had died (even valets have grandfathers) leaving a tidy sum; and as there were peculiarities in the will, Foxham would lose his chance of inheriting if he left England.

Loveland privately thought it almost equivalent to _lese majeste_ that his man should desert him for such a selfish trifle as private interest.

But he would have scorned to retain a servant who wished to leave him; besides, there were advantages in losing even such a treasure as Foxham before the two pa.s.sages were taken.

Val had learned from a friend that, if you sent your valet second cla.s.s, you were not able to command his services on shipboard. This seemed a disgusting waste of money, and ought to be protested against in _The Times_, or somewhere. On the other hand, he could not afford a first-cla.s.s fare for Foxham.

"I dare say I can get some fellow over there, if everything goes well,"

said he. "Meanwhile I shall save money on old Fox. He hasn't opened his mouth about wages. Jolly impudent if he had, because of course he knows I'll pay up when its convenient. And anyhow, a hundred and fifty in the letter of credit is the least I can rub along with, on the other side. I must 'look sharp' as Harborough says, and pick up the right girl, so as to get everything in shape as soon as possible, or I may find myself in a mess."

"Don't imagine anything so horrid, darling," said Lady Loveland, anxious to prop up her son's spirits as well as his credit. "Think only of the best. But I'm sorry about Foxham. He turns you out so perfectly."

"Oh, I learned to shift for myself like a regular navvy in South Africa," Loveland consoled her. "A chap has to keep clean and have the right folds in his trousers, whatever happens; and I worried along somehow without disgracing the family. I can do the same now, though it'll be a bore, especially till I get used to it again."