Alice Muriel Williamson

“ Fox-Leffingwell’s blue eyes, the hard lines round her Cupid’s bow mouth, and the quick frown of her dark brows whenever Lady Pamela snubbed Sir Thomas.
The young man believed that “Mrs. Leff” had been particularly hard up, and that the millionaire had offered to help her out of her difficulties if she gave him a chance to win this beautiful and high-bred girl, whose husband—whatever his own antecedents—would be connected with some of the best families in England.
Pamela Sylvain, if she were nothing but herself, would be a bride for any man to be proud of, Jack thought ”

“ Before she knew “where she was,” Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell owed Mr. Jack Adriance two hundred pounds.
What to do she did not know. Pam had not yet been forced into accepting Sir Thomas Potterson, by way of paying her bridge debts—though her decision could not be postponed for long—therefore, until all was settled, the man would neither give more nor lend. He was hard as nails. So Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell laughed, and said to Jack Adriance: “What a good thing for me that I was just learning—that we weren’t playing for money!” ”

“ Fox-Leffingwell’s opinion, Jack Adriance was a blackmailer. In Lady Pamela Sylvain’s, he was a knight of chivalry—almost uncomfortably chivalrous, indeed, for he did not propose until he was as certain as a man can ever be of such matters that there was no danger the girl would accept him out of sheer gratitude. ”

“ He began to feel from this moment that—as he expressed it—there was “a game of some sort on between those two.”
“Those two” were Sir Thomas Potterson and Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell; and the more Jack saw of the party, the more he grew convinced that the woman had invited Lady Pamela Sylvain to visit her at Löwenfels with a special object.
After the two or three evenings of promenades on the balcony, Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell changed her tactics. She did everything to throw the man and the girl together, and clearly she was not the sort of person to give up for unselfish reasons a valuable admirer. ”

“ Lady Pamela, perhaps we Americans are made differently from other men. I don't know; but I do know we just can’t see a woman cry without wanting to cut off our right hands to help her.”
She promptly began to cry again, and hid her face, which gave Jack courage.
“Perhaps I could help, you know,” he went on. “I guess you're alone here, aren't you, except for your friend, Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell, and——”
“My friend!” Lady Pam echoed bitterly. And Jack caught at the cue.
“Well, you might let me be your friend, then. Girls always let us be their friends in our country. ”

“ Sir Thomas was very rich. If he had not been he would not have been called Sir Thomas, for there was the tache of a ready-made clothing business upon him, which had had to be erased as far as possible by an application of a hundred thousand charity-dinner turkeys and a huge check for a hospital. ”