All Story Magazine, December 1913 — page 14: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

724 “Two or three of her chums have landed coronets, and she is simply aching to call herself countess of some- thing or other. She is an only daugh- ter. Rollins would buy her the moon if he could—and he has learned about you, looked you up, found that you batted a few centuries for Surrey last year; that you can sit on a horse well enough to play on a second-grade polo four—that you stand seventy-one and a half inches in your socks; that you have a passable countenance and are not such a fool as you look. “One can't have everything, so he has decided to put up with your name, and when he has bought up all the Didderington mortgages he shall come to you and say: ‘ Young man, I own the castles and the lands of your an- cestors. All I need to complete the business is that thing you stick on your head on state occasions, and I guess I've got to get you to get that. I have a daughter—’ and the thing is done. “Of course, to make it novelettish, you've got to meet her somewhere be- fore the old chap comes on the scene at all, and fall in love with her and she with you, without either of you know- ing who the other is. She must be ravishingly beautiful, and you — well —you can't be helped. Rollins is pay- ing for it, so I have no reason to com- plain.” The waiter came and departed. I drank deeply before I replied, and since there were other club members in the smoking-room, of course, I spoke quietly. What I said does not really matter. Sysonsby laughed at it. He has no respect for a chap’s feelings, and he foolishly proposed a wager that Rol- lins was really up to the stupid busi- ness of buying me as a husband for his daughter. I refused it at all events; said it was tommyrot and that, in any case, I would not marry the girl 1f she were as fascinating as Cleopatra and as rich as the Bank of England. And Sysonsby laughed again —a THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE. beastly, knowing laugh—as if he had more grounds for his idiotic theories than mere imagination. “ All right, old chap,” he said, sip- ping his whisky and soda and looking queerly at me over the top of the glass. ‘ Have it your own way. But I should advise you to find out what Rollins is after—if it isn’t your coronet. “He evidently means to shut the gates of Didderington Park and the doors of Didderington Manor in your face one of these days. Look him up, old man. “She may not be as fascinating as Cleopatra nor as rich as the Bank of England—but a name like yours must give some discount. I’m going to get shaved. I believe the Randania sails on Saturday.” I said in the beginning that Sysons- by was an idiot, and I still thought so when, the following Saturday, from the Randania’s upper promenade-deck I watched Holyhead vanish into thin blue haze. CHAPTER II. SYSONSBY’S FRIEND. Every one has been seized with a few foolish impulses. Sailing upon the Randania was one of mine, but I was really never more serious in my lite. Somehow or other, I could not get Sysonsby’s idea out of my head. Per- haps you know how it is? The germ of a remote possibility bothers you. You laugh at it at first— not very sincerely —but the thing sticks; and the more you think of it the bigger and more bothersome it grows, until you admit it quite probable. Then you lie awake at night, and before morning you are quite sure ‘there i 1s no mistake about it. I spent two quite interesting days and nights — hardly slept a wink — thought like the dickens— and rose upon Friday morning very much deter- mined to leave my bally coronet in the comniicloooks.com