all they offer."

So the purchasing agency went reluctantly out of commission.

Even the owner of millions must draw the line somewhere.

Roderic was not to be seen at luncheon, although Cleo[47] purposely lingered over the meal, hoping he would turn up.

[47]

Jerome was there, handsome as ever, and apparently much sought after by a designing lady mother from Chicago who possessed two plain girls of a marriageable age.

No doubt they believed him a marquis, or at the very least connected with some noble family anxious to make a "connection" with pork.

These things happen frequently, and there really seems no remedy—the market is there and the goods offered for sale. Occasionally a genuine love match occurs which redounds to the credit of Old England and Young America; but for the most part they are cut and dried affairs entered into for position on one side and gold on the other. Such unions are beneath contempt.

Jerome bowed and smiled in his usual affable manner, and Cleo answered him just as though she had not been informed of his dark schemes.

This matter of fact young woman had traveled far and wide—she had rubbed up against all manner of people, and long since ceased to be excessively surprised at anything.

Wellington was simply carrying out the business for which nature had endowed him.

There were many people gifted with more money than brains—the reverse was true in his case, and he amused himself by endeavoring to bring about a more evenly balanced condition of affairs, to his pecuniary advantage, of course.

Cleo could even find something to admire about his bold piratical way of living by his wits—at least he had more of the man about him than most of the petted darlings of society on both sides of the Atlantic who fawned[48] upon her in a sickly sentimental way from precisely the same sinister motives that influenced Wellington's bold attacks.

[48]

Let these parvenu mammas with 

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