Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/76

 "Yes. It must have been love at first sight, and Milly's charming, of course. I can imagine her being a lovely girl."

"She was. Rather like a young Madonna."

"She's like a Madonna now, and doesn't look a bit more than thirty, though I believe she's older than Sir Ian, if the truth were known."

"A woman's as old as she looks."

"Then you're not more than twenty-four."

"Thank you. I feel a hundred."

"I wish you could have seen Milly to-day."

"Perhaps she'll come over to-morrow. What a beautiful girl Miss Verney is."

"Oh, you saw her? She isn't looking her best now. The course of true love hasn't run smooth."

Terry did not tell Maud that Nora Verney had evidently been crying. She remarked that Sir Ian had said Miss Verney was in sorrow or trouble of some sort.

"Nobody knows what the exact truth is," Maud explained, with relish, "but—I wrote you about Ian Barr, old Sir Ian Hereward's son?"

"Yes. When Sir Ian inherited the title. Yes, it was a strange, sad story. You said he was about twenty then, so he must be twenty-seven now."

"About that. Sir Ian thought it a very hard case, and would have done a lot for young Ian if the boy would have let him. But he wouldn't accept