As it happened, Lesley was thinking of Lord Loveland at that very moment. Perhaps it was a kind of telepathy which brought her image so clearly before Fanny Milton's eyes; for Lesley's thoughts included Fanny.
It was not yet time for the coloured porters to begin "making down" the beds in the sleeping cars, and Lesley and her aunt sat opposite one another, each with a book in her hand. Mrs. Loveland had a story of the South, as she could dimly remember it, before the Civil War, and she was reading with interest half sad, half pleased. Lesley had a novel, too, one which had been making quite a sensation while she was in Europe, and her aunt had bought it for her in the Grand Central Station, before taking the train. She had often said that she would like to read the book, but now, though her eyes travelled from one line to another, and she mechanically turned a page here and there, she did not even know the names of the characters, or what they were saying or doing.
The panting of the great engine and the rushing roar of the wheels had come to have a refrain for her. "Never again—never again," she heard them say, as if the words were shouted spitefully into her ears. "Never see him again—never again. He'll forget you—forget you. Soon he'll marry—marry some rich girl."
Then she wondered who the rich girl would be. Elinor Coolidge, perhaps? Elinor was very rich, and very beautiful, and already very proud. Everything about her was superlative. A great many glowing descriptive adjectives were called for, when one only thought about Elinor, and Lesley's experience as a story-writer had made her expert with adjectives—painfully expert, it seemed now, as her imagination ran ahead—even ahead of the rushing train—to picture Elinor as a bride.
"Oh, I'm sure she wouldn't make him happy!" Lesley thought, and then asked herself whether Lord Loveland deserved to be happy.
No, of course he didn't deserve happiness with a girl he married for money. Yet Lesley couldn't bear to think of him as miserable or disappointed in life. The brilliant sparks which showered past the train windows seemed to her like the moments she had spent with Loveland, moments left behind for ever now, and she could not help wishing that she might live them over again.
"Perhaps I might have helped him to be different, if I'd tried," she said to herself, as she watched the specks of fire which flashed and died. "But I didn't try. I was too proud to try, I suppose. It was a silly kind of pride, for he could be—he could be such a man, if he knew himself, and would live up to himself."
Elinor could not help him to do that. She was not the kind of girl to dream of the existence of that real self, of which Lesley had fancied she caught glimpses sometimes, as if behind a veil that never had been torn aside. Miss Coolidge would be well enough satisfied with Lord Loveland as he was, for she would only want from him material things, such things as she could afford to buy with her money. And if they married, the bright loveableness in Val's nature would be clouded and obscured. He would grow hard, and wholly selfish.
But with Fanny Milton, if he should marry her?
It was just as Lesley asked herself this question, that Fanny's thoughts flew to Lesley, wondering what Lesley would do if she saw Lord Loveland held up to public scorn.