But he did not reciprocate their interest, he cared nothing for black eyes or blue that looked at him with gay coquetry or tender sympathy.
He said to himself that since Floy was dead he could never love again.
He held himself moodily apart from every passenger but one.
This was a blonde nobleman of barely middle age, very handsome and grave-looking—Lord Alexander Miller, who had recently inherited by his father’s death a grand estate in Devonshire.
He was going over for a tour of the States, he told the Beresfords, but his grave blue eyes had in them a look as if he should not enjoy anything very much, the look of a man with some secret sorrow tugging at his heart-strings.
Perhaps it was this secret kinship of sorrow that drew the two men together on shipboard, for each recognized a subtile affinity in the other, and so they became fast friends.
There was something, too, in the nobleman’s fair, frank face, so debonair though so serious, that fascinated the younger man. Where had he seen such blue eyes before in the dim past?
It came to him at last with a shock of mingled pain and pleasure.
His new friend bore a subtile, haunting, charming likeness to his dead love Floy. And for this likeness St. George admired him all the more.
By the time they reached New York, St. George was loath to part with his fascinating friend.