have compromised his future, if he had gone to dine with the Coolidges, or Spanish-eyed, flirtatious Mrs. Milton and her gentle little daughter Fanny. A dinner with them – or even with the dullest people who had invited him – would have been preferable to an undiluted dose of his own society on this first night in a strange land. However, it was too late to reconsider now with dignity (though he was childishly confident that any of his American acquaintances would have been entranced, had he suddenly changed his mind) and the next best thing to dining with friends would be to watch the coming and going of gay New York in the Waldorf-Astoria restaurant.
He dressed and went down about eight, therefore, looking forward to the novelty of the unknown.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Discovery of Lord Loveland by America
It was a brilliant scene into the midst of which Loveland plunged.
Society begins to dine earlier in New York than in London; therefore at eight o'clock dinner was in full swing. There was scarcely an empty table; and many of the women being in hats and semi-evening dress, the red and gold restaurant suggested to the newcomer a living picture of Paris.
He had had the forethought to telephone down and order a table to be kept for him, and informing an interrogative waiter that he was Lord Loveland he learned that his place would be found at the far end of the room.
It looked a very far end indeed, gazing across an intervening sea of flowerlike hats, charming faces, and jewelled necks that glimmered white under film of lace and tulle; but Loveland was not shy. Among all the men who protected the charming faces, his sweeping, faintly supercilious glance did not show him one whose physical advantages he need envy. He rather enjoyed his progress, winding on and on along narrow paths between rose-burdened tables, with lovely eyes lifting to his as he passed by. He wondered if any pair of those eyes was destined to look down his own table at Loveland Castle some day. Well, they should be beautiful eyes to deserve the honour! the thought slipped vaguely through his head, and then his own eyes brightened with the light of recognition.
There, at a large table decorated with white and purple violets, sat Elinor Coolidge, her father, Mrs. Milton and Fanny, and two men whom Loveland had never seen before. Standing, and bending slightly down to talk in a confidential tone with one of these men, was Major Cadwallader Hunter.
His back was turned towards Loveland, who recognised him instantly, however, by the set of his high, military shoulders, and the bald spot on his head which Lesley Dearmer had likened to the shape of Italy on the map. He seemed to listen with deep interest to what one of the seated men was saying, and then to chime in eagerly with some addition of his own. Everyone at the table was absorbed in the conversation between these two, and as Loveland came nearer, he saw that the expression of all the faces, including those of the three ladies, was so grave as to appear out of keeping with the liveliness of the scene. Suddenly, however, Loveland caught Fanny Milton's eye. She started, and blushed scarlet. The slight, involuntary movement she made drew Miss Coolidge's attention: and Elinor, seeing the direction in which Fanny's eyes were turned, sent a glance that way.
Loveland, within bowing distance now, met the glance, and returned it, smiling. He was annoyed that Cadwallader Hunter should be with the party, even though evidently not of it. Yet, after all, he said to himself, perhaps it was as well. He did not mean to apologise to Cadwallader Hunter, for he thought his own rudeness more or less justified by the liberty the other had taken; but he had already made up his mind that, the next time he met the man, he would act as if nothing disagreeable had happened. As to Cadwallader Hunter's readiness to snatch at the olive branch, Loveland had not the slightest doubt of it. He thought he had only to hold out a hand for the Major to kiss it, grovelling.
Elinor Coolidge did not blush at the sight of Lord Loveland as Fanny Milton did, but her beautiful face changed curiously. Its cameo-clear lines hardened, her lips were pressed together, and her large eyes narrowed, gleaming like topazes between their dark lashes, as the lights from the shaded candles on the table lighted sparks in their yellow-brown depths.
The thought flashed into Loveland's head that the quick change in her face meant jealousy of Fanny Milton. He had noticed more than once on shipboard that she had seemed jealous of Fanny, and now that deep blush of the younger girl's at sight of him, had probably vexed her. He could not attribute the hardening of the beautiful features to any other cause, and as of the two it was wise to prefer Elinor and her millions to Fanny and her thousands, he let his first look, his first words, be for the Coolidges, father and daughter.
"How d'you do?" he asked, pausing at the table.
Instead of answering, or putting out her hand to him as he expected, Elinor almost convulsively grasped the sticks of a delicate little fan which lay beside her plate. She shot a topaz glance at one of the two new men, then let her eyes under raised brows seek and hold her father's.
Lord Loveland was at once surprised and puzzled by this extraordinary reception. "Can Cadwallader Hunter have told them all some lie to set them against me?" he asked himself. But it was no more than a passing thought. It was incredible that Miss Coolidge should believe anything against him.
At the sound of Loveland's voice, Cadwallader Hunter straightened up in haste and turned round, looking suddenly stiff and wicked as a frozen snake.
He stared into Loveland's eyes, his own like grey glass; and an unpromising smile depressed the corners of his thin lips.
"Oh, that's it, is it?" thought Val, with the carelessness of a man used to dominating situations. "He's afraid I'm not going to speak to him, and he daren't speak first for fear of being snubbed again. Well" – and Val felt pleasantly magnanimous – "I'll give him a lead. How are you?" he asked, with the patronising tone his voice unconsciously took when he spoke to this man.
Then he could hardly believe his eyes which told him that Cadwallader Hunter had turned a contemptuous shoulder upon him, darting disgust in a venomous glance.
"This is the – person we were speaking of," he said to the dark, clean-shaven man towards whom he had been bending (he seemed always to be bending towards someone) when Loveland came up. "Shall we have him turned out?"
Mr. Coolidge half rose in his seat, losing his characteristic stolidity. "No, no," he returned, in a low, decided voice, "there must be no scene here, for the ladies' sake. Keep quiet, everybody."
"You're right, Coolidge," returned the dark, smooth-faced man.
Then the latter fixed his eyes on Loveland with a stare under a frown; and the other new man stared also; but the three women looked away, trying in vain to think of something easy and natural to say to each other. A slight, nervous twitching which occasionally disturbed the tranquillity of Mrs. Milton's camellia-white face became visible; Elinor Coolidge was pale and motionless; and Fanny's eyes swam in a lake of tears which she struggled to keep from over-flowing.
Again it struck Loveland that he was living in a dream; the gorgeous room; the crowd of well-dressed men and beautiful women; the hurrying waiters; the lights; the fragrance of flowers and food, and scented laces; the chatter of laughing voices subdued by distance; and more unreal than all, the table surrounded by the faces that he knew, faces he had expected to find smiling in friendship, now frozen into something like horror – horror at him, Lord Loveland, whom everybody had always wanted and admired.
It could not be true. It was not happening really. Things like this did not happen.
He stood for a moment, stupidly, like a boy in the school-room who has been bidden to stand up and be stared at as a punishment for some misdemeanour. He was almost inclined to laugh at the insolence of Cadwallader Hunter, as a lion might laugh at a fox terrier worrying his foot. It was on his lips to say,
