Page:Robert Barr - Lord Stranleigh Philanthropist.djvu/38

 acquaintance was already aware of the journal's contents, and had made his request merely as an opening for conversation.

"I am not well enough dressed," he demurred, when Stranleigh proposed they should go to the concert together, "to mix with you swells on the terrace, and though I understand the music is good, I don't care much for music."

"I'm no swell," said the younger man with a laugh, "and I've just invited you to come there with me."

"No swell!" cried the other. "Why, I heard a person who spoke English say, as he pointed you out, that you were Lord Stranleigh, and he added you were the richest man in Europe."

"Oh! I don't know about the richest, but my name happens to be Stranleigh."

"I didn't believe about the richest myself. If a man has a little money, people always call him a millionaire, and generally he isn't. But their calling you a lord interested me. I'd never seen a real live lord. I thought they didn't speak to ordinary folks."

"My fault," confessed Stranleigh, "lies rather in the opposite direction. I'm so anxious to talk to people, that I sometimes find a difficulty in getting them to talk to me."