Lesley Dearmer and her aunt were staying that night at Ashville with their friends, and next morning everything was arranged. Loveland explained that, in a fortnight, at latest, he would certainly be released from the bondage of his embarra.s.sments, therefore he would take service as Mr. Cremer's chauffeur only for that length of time, thus giving his employers a chance to find a good man for a permanent engagement. He received from Lesley the two weeks' wages in advance, and the fifty dollars--a far larger amount than he had touched since landing--seemed to him a respectable sum. Ten dollars he kept for his own necessities, and the rest he divided among the members of the broken company.

The profits from the three performances of "Lord Bob" paid the hotel bills for all, and left a few dollars over. Lumped together, there was enough to take Lillie de Lisle, Ed Binney, Miss St. Clare, and the Winters to Chicago, leaving something to tide each one through a week or two of idleness.

Lillie, Ed, and Miss St. Clare could hardly express their grat.i.tude to Loveland, and the words they said to him warmed his heart as it had never been warmed before. There was a queer kind of happiness in sacrificing himself for others that came as an absolutely new sensation to Val. He wondered at it, feeling the glow of it, and was dimly conscious that the hardships he endured had unexpected compensations.

As for Pa and Ma Winter, they were less openly grateful, seeming to take what was done for them more or less as a right; and they would a.s.suredly have protested vigorously had Loveland favoured his friends, Miss de Lisle and Ed Binney, beyond what they--the Winters--had received. Their att.i.tude, however, mattered little to Val. They were old and unfortunate, and he was sorry for them, as he was learning to be sorry for those upon whom the world was hard: besides, Lillie and Ed, and perhaps Miss St. Clare, would have refused to accept anything beyond what the Winters shared; and both a.s.sured Val that one day, before long, they would repay him all.

Lillie was in touch with Bill again; therefore, in spite of the uncertain future, she was not unhappy. She had written to Bill the day after Loveland joined the company, had sent him a photograph of herself, and a collar for Shakespeare, the best that could be bought for fifty cents in Modunk. Bill had answered to Ashville, and though neither had any prospects, both had unlimited hope, now that they were sure of the love and loyalty which had outlived discouragements, absence, and unprosperous years. Lillie was going to Chicago, and Chicago might have something to offer. Bye and bye--who could tell?--she and Bill, "the best man she ever knew," might come together. Meanwhile, they could go on loving each other.

The girl went off buoyed up with hope; and Ed Binney had friends in Chicago. He would rest a little, and be "all right," he said to Val, shaking hands over and over again in the moment of goodbye.

To reach Lesley Dearmer's home it was necessary to travel for an hour in a slow local train which lingered lovingly at each tiny station by the way, and then to drive for six miles in a carriage. This last stage of the journey ended at the Hill Farm, as Mrs. Loveland's place was called; and the Hill Farm lay in charming country not far from Louisville.

Loveland was instructed to meet the two ladies at the train, and receive his railway ticket, having seen his friends off for Chicago; and at noon of the day after her surprise visit to the theatre, Miss Dearmer's newly appointed chauffeur was waiting for his employer at the Ashville station.

In his hand was the battered bag which had called forth the contempt of Jack Jacobus, and in his heart were shame, rebellion, jealousy, and joy, mingled with several other emotions, none of which he could have defined--least of all the joy.

He reminded himself that there could now be no possible satisfaction in his nearness to Lesley. She did not like him enough to believe in him.

She had practically admitted that she accepted the estimate of strangers, and the circ.u.mstantial evidence which made him seem a fraud.

She had not denied her engagement to Sidney Cremer, whose servant Loveland had pledged himself to be, and she even showed--or Val imagined it--a mischievous pleasure in the situation. She had not had the grace to say, "I know this is all horrid, and humiliating to you. I'm sorry, and will try to help you make the best of it."

Why should she say so, indeed, when she believed him to be no better than an adventurer, punished for a mean attempt at deceiving? Regarded from that point of view, he ought to be grateful to Miss Dearmer for trusting him far enough to take him on as a chauffeur. But he was not grateful. He thought that, on the contrary, he was very angry; yet he was not quite sure. And if he were angry, it was a strange kind of anger that he felt.

He had to wait for some time on the platform before Miss Dearmer appeared, and then she came towards him alone.

"Auntie is saying goodbye to our Ashville friends," she explained.

"I--they're not going to stop with us till the train goes. I thought for several reasons it would be better not, and they quite understand.

Before you meet my aunt, I want a little talk with you. I haven't told her, or the others, that you--that there's any connection between you and the newspaper story about--the Marquis and his adventures."

"Thank you. That was considerate," said Val, somewhat sarcastically.

"What have you told Mrs. Loveland, then?"

"That's what I want to talk with you about. I said I'd met you before, and was sorry to find now that you'd had misfortunes, losing your money, and other things that had put you into an uncomfortable position. Auntie was in her stateroom on board ship till the last morning, and then I didn't point you out to her. If she saw you at all, she didn't notice you particularly, and besides she's very near sighted. If there'd been any danger of her recognising you, she would have done so at the theatre last night, when you were playing 'Lord Bob.' She knows only that you're Mr. Gordon, and that to help you a little, I've asked you to act as chauffeur for a short time, till you can get something better."

"And till Mr. Cremer can get someone better," Loveland capped her words.

"You have to be tried first," smiled the girl, "before we can tell whether you're good, better--or best. Meanwhile Aunt Barbara's just trusting me. She always does, for she's used to what she calls my funny ways, and she's found out that there's some sense in them. My experiments generally turn out successes."

"Then I'm to consider myself one of your experiments?"

"Decidedly," laughed Lesley. "And I mean you to be a success--a great success. Now I'm going to Auntie. I think we'd better travel in different cars, for she hasn't quite got used yet to the idea of a gentleman chauffeur. I've told her that they're the fashion, and she's prepared to take you on faith. But the first time she travels in your company you had better be in the motor."

With that, the girl pressed a railway ticket into his hand, and he was left not knowing whether he were more inclined to laughter or to cursing. But the train came at this moment, and he had no time to a.n.a.lyse his mood.

At Louisville a carriage was waiting for Mrs. Loveland and Miss Dearmer.

It was a brougham, and there was room in it only for themselves and their handbags. The chauffeur was told off to a hired vehicle, for which his employers would pay.

Once outside the suburbs of the big town, the country was pretty, and reminded Val so strongly of England that it brought on an attack of homesickness.

The Hill Farm might almost have been an English farm, with its rambling, red-brick house, apparently of the Georgian period, its square-paned windows and its pillared porch draped with a tangle of grapevine and Virginia creeper. Val had seen farm-houses at home, converted by the younger sons of gentlemen into pleasant if modest mansions; and the gracious elms, the st.u.r.dy old oaks and generous apple trees might all have been transplanted from an English landscape.

Val arrived only a few minutes later than Lesley and Mrs. Loveland; and the girl was waiting for him in the open door-way when his hack drove up.

"This is a big, old house," said Lesley, coming out into the porch--"at least, it's old for America. It's stood for about a hundred and fifty years, and there's lots of room in it. You will live in the west wing.

In a few minutes Uncle Wally will show you where to go. Already we've given directions to have your quarters got ready, but while the servants are busy there you may as well come out with me, and have a look at--at--Sidney's new car. I hope you'll like it. Here, Uncle Wally, take Mr. Gordon's bag."

This order was a surprise to Loveland. He had supposed that the "Uncle Wally," who was presently to be his guide, would turn out to be a relative of Miss Dearmer's, perhaps the master of the house; but it was a very ancient and very black darkey, dressed in a sombre old-fashioned livery, who came forward, all white grin and low bows.

The knuckly black hand relieved Loveland of the shabby bag, but there was no contempt either for the bag or its owner on the mild old face of the grey-headed negro, who was as perfect and well trained a servant in his way as any butler in an English country house. Evidently he, too, had been told that this was a "gentleman chauffeur," to be treated like a gentleman; and Loveland was grateful to his hostess, feeling a sudden impulse towards happiness, until with a shock, he remembered Sidney Cremer.

"When will Mr. Cremer arrive?" he asked Lesley, as they walked together across a sloping lawn, towards the stables.

"Oh, Sidney's very much at home here," she answered lightly, "you may see him at any time. Meanwhile, you won't mind driving the car for me, will you?"

"I think you know whether I'll mind that or not," said Loveland, almost more to himself than to the girl. "If only there were no Sidney Cremer----"

"I have an idea you won't dislike Sidney when you meet him," Lesley said, kindly.

"A man's chauffeur has no right to an opinion about him--at least, that's what I used to think myself," said Val.

"And now--and now are your ideas changing? Do you begin to feel just a tiny bit, that 'rank's but the guinea stamp,' and 'a man's a man for a'

that'? For if you do, after all it won't have done you any harm to come to America," said Lesley.

"It's riches here, not rank, which counts apparently," Loveland retorted. "And that's just as bad."

"Riches don't count with me," said Lesley.

"Cremer must be very rich," grumbled Loveland, apparently apropos of nothing.

"Sidney makes a good deal of money out of novels and plays--at least, it seems a good deal to me, but maybe it wouldn't to you. Perhaps Sidney's earnings amount to about twelve or fifteen thousand of your English pounds a year--and he's saved quite a lot, too, for he's been popular as a playwright and novelist in America and England for several years now."

"By Jove!" exclaimed Loveland. "What a lucky beggar!"

"That just expresses it--a 'lucky beggar'--for he was almost a beggar at the time he made his first success. He was dependent on his relations when a child, for his father and mother died when he was a baby, leaving him not a penny, and he was brought up with the idea of being a school teacher, which he would have hated."

"Success like that often spoils people," said Val, frankly ungracious in his jealousy.

"I don't think it's spoiled Sidney," replied the girl. "He has heaps of faults, but I shouldn't call him conceited or vain."

"Shall you be married soon?"

Lesley smiled, and her dimples twinkled. "It isn't decided yet. But I daresay it will be soon. Now, I suppose with the grand ideas you used to talk to me about, twelve or fifteen thousand pounds a year, and a few loose thousands lying around would seem like shabby genteel poverty to you."

"Don't hit a man when he's down," said Loveland. "If I had only half as much as Mr. Cremer, I could do the things I want most to do."

"What are they?" asked Lesley. For it was still some distance to the stable which was also, for the present, garage as well, and she walked slowly on the moist gra.s.s, picking her way, step by step, with leisurely daintiness.

"Nowadays, the things I feel I should like most to do are to restore our poor old tumbled-down home, and get rid of my debts."