Page:The time spirit; a romantic tale (IA timespiritromant00snaiiala).pdf/120

 *—the heir could take his choice, but the ukase had gone forth that one of them it must be.

The Tenderfoot did not feel in a marrying mood just then, but he had chivalry enough not to say so to his mentor, who as the messenger of Eros began to disclose quite a pretty turn of humor. It was not seemly to offer advice in such a delicate matter, but Blanche was a nailer to hounds, although she never kept awake after dinner, while Marjorie's sphere was church decoration in times of festival, in the course of which she generally had an affaire with a curate.

Face to face with a problem which in one way or another was kept ever before his eyes, the poor Tenderfoot seemed to feel that if wive he must in the charmèd circle, and the relentless Wrexham assured him that it was a solemn duty, perhaps there was most to be said for Cousin Marjorie. She was not supremely attractive it was true. The Dinneford girls, one and all, were famous up and down the island for a resolute absence of charm. And the Dinneford frontispiece, imposing enough in the male, when rendered in terms of the female somehow seemed to lack poetry. Still Cousin Marjorie was not yet thirty and her general health was excellent.

The heir had now been settled in Arlington Street six months. And with nothing in the world to do but learn to live a life which threatened to bore him exceedingly, time began to hang upon his hands. Moreover, the prospect of having presently to lead Cousin Marjorie to the altar merely increased a sense of malaise. Here was an arbitrary deepening of the tones of a picture which heaven knew was dark enough already. For a modern and virile young man, life at Bridport House