"Lesley, wasn't Loveland the name of that Lord you knew on the boat?" asked Lesley's Aunt Barbara, peering at her niece from behind an immense newspaper which hid all the upper part of her body as if with a screen.
Lesley was curled up on a sofa at the other end of the room, which had for some reason or other, more or less appropriate, been called "the library" for several generations. The girl was writing a story, which was promised for a certain time, but her heart was not in her work, and she welcomed interruptions, instead of discouraging them, as usual.
If it had been her habit to shut herself up alone for several hours a day, or if she had sat bolt upright at a desk, Mrs. Loveland would have taken Lesley's work more seriously; but when a pretty girl, looking scarcely more than a child—a girl you have seen grow up from babyhood—nestles cosily in a bank of ruffly silk cushions, with a frivolous "scribbling pad" on her knee, and a pencil in her hand, how can one realise that she is gravely pursuing literature as a profession, and must not be addressed even if one has the most exciting things to say?
Lesley did not answer at first, for she was composing her voice, that Aunt Barbara might not guess she had been taken by surprise; therefore Mrs. Loveland asked the same question over again in a louder tone.
"Yes," said Lesley. "Don't you remember my telling you his name was the same as yours?"
"There! I thought so!" exclaimed the little dovelike lady. "Only I wasn't quite sure whether you said the name was exactly the same, or rather like mine. You didn't talk as if you took much interest in him, and it seemed as though you would, if we'd been namesakes. I don't think you spoke of him more than once, did you?"
"I don't remember, I'm sure," replied Lesley, beginning to scrawl the name of "Loveland" aimlessly across the top of the page which ought by this time to have been covered with brilliant conversation between her hero and heroine. She answered in an indifferent tone, almost as if she were thinking of something else; but if her mind had indeed been properly bent on the story, she would have said: "Auntie, darling, I'm a thousand miles away, please, with Dick and Susanne. Don't bring me back, there's a dear!"
"Well, I'm glad you didn't take much interest in him," went on Mrs. Loveland, in a tone pregnant with mystery and importance. "I know I oughtn't to be talking to you when you're at work, and I don't often, do I?"
"Not very often," smiled Lesley, her dimples softening the gentle little reproach, if it were a reproach. But she didn't look up at her aunt. She pretended to be writing on; and so she was. But it was only one word, over and over again, that she wrote: "Loveland—Loveland." And her heart had begun to beat in a hurried, warning way, as often it had on shipboard when she heard Loveland's voice, and wondered if he were coming to talk to her—or to some other girl.
"But this is something really very special," Aunt Barbara apologised. "It's quite exciting. Only fancy having known him! I almost wish you'd pointed him out to me that last morning on board, when I was up on deck. It would be interesting to remember what he was like."