Page:Barr--Stranleighs millions.djvu/66

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54
STRANLEIGH'S MILLIONS

through his various stockbrokers. So when it was announced that Lord Stranleigh was about to visit New York, the Press of that city was full of conjectures as to the cause of his western journey, and it also assured him that he would receive an enthusiastic reception on his arrival at the Empire City. The masculine leaders of finance, and the feminine leaders of fashion, were equally determined that the young man should find his visit interesting, and from what they had read of him, they were quite unprepared for the disdainful aloofness that characterised his conduct the moment he left the shores of old England. He refused all invitations with a noble scorn which was almost mediæval in its cold severity.

It was generally admitted that he was every inch a lord, but the frigid, impassive dignity of his manner, and his rigid exclusiveness, were facts for which the United States were unprepared. It had been supposed that he was a genial fellow, with ideas that were almost democratic in their radicalism, but here, instead, was encountered the true Grand Duke of fiction, to whom the common man is but dirt beneath his feet. He haughtily brushed aside the reporters, and refused to kow-tow to that mighty engine of modernity, the daily Press. The most amazing interviews appeared, in which he gave expression to sentiments that roused the anger of many people from New York to California, but he did not even take the trouble to contradict these