Having got this information, passed on from Mr. Rosenstein, Isidora had felt safe in attempting her _coup d'état_. Bidding her obliging friend goodbye with thanks, she went herself to the Waldorf-Astoria. Assuming the air of a Duchess (as she conceived it) she showed to a clerk the paper given her by Loveland, and signed by him. At the same time she mentioned haughtily that she was a friend of the gentleman's, and had dropped in for his mail.
There was no mail, had come the laconic answer; no cablegram; no letters; no visiting cards; and nobody had called with the exception of two or three newspaper men.
Loveland's heart was cold as iron, and as heavy, when Isidora's story had reached this climax. Difference in time could no longer account for the London bank's failure in replying to his wire of yesterday. There was some other reason for silence--some strange, sinister reason connected, no doubt, with the attitude of the New York cashier twenty-four hours ago. Val asked himself insistently what that reason might be, and could get no answer, although various disturbing conjectures flitted through his brain. He thought of the debts he had left behind in London, and wondered if any of his creditors could possibly be responsible for the mysterious trouble which had attacked him simultaneously from both sides of the world.
And nobody had called or written! This lack of courtesy showed, to his mind, that Jim's and Betty's friends had all read the newspapers, and had taken his affair with Milton in bad part. The man Milton was to blame for the scandal, which had doubtless been spread by Cadwallader Hunter's journalist friend, in revenge for a snub. Cadwallader Hunter's malice, too, must have been another match to light the fire of mischief; and taking everything together, Loveland began to fear that the game in America was up. He hated to fail, hated to be thwarted--pushed back with brutal violence from the very threshold of success; but it was all too sordid, too humiliating for a gentleman to contend against. He began to tell himself that the dignified course was to turn his back on America and march homeward with flags flying as if he had suffered no defeat. Yes, that was what he would do. It would be disgracing himself and his name, to go down and wrestle in the arena with enemies who did not pretend to fight fair. Yet--to leave this country for ever, with no hope of seeing Lesley Dearmer again! She had not even given him her address, and had only laughed elusively when he suggested "calling on her some day, after everything was comfortably settled." He knew no more than that she lived "near Louisville," therefore he could not write to beg that she would not believe any hateful tales the newspapers might invent. Oh, yes, it was all over--that, little episode, which had been so sweet, which had taught him that he had heart enough to love and long for a woman, because of what she was, not because of what she had.