Page:The time spirit; a romantic tale (IA timespiritromant00snaiiala).pdf/89

 II

An electric bell was heard to buzz.

"They are here," said Mrs. Wren in a tone with a thrill in it.

A neat parlor maid announced "Lord Wrexham, Mr. Dinneford," and two stalwart young men entered cheerily. They were hearty upstanding fellows, curiously alike in manner, appearance, dress, yet in the thousand and one subtleties of character immutably different. But this was not a moment for the fine shades. They came into the room unaffectedly, without shyness, and warmly took the hands of welcome that were offered them.

Wrexham, a subaltern of the Pinks of three years' standing, was an attractive but rather irresolute young man. He knew that he was perilously near forbidden ground. If not exactly in the toils of an infatuation, the charms of Milly were growing day by day upon an impressionable mind. Fully content as yet to live in the moment, a wiser young man might have begun to pay the future some little attention.

As for the lively, headstrong, unconventional Jack Dinneford, at present at a loose end in London, to whom Wrexham himself had been appointed as a sort of unofficial bear-leader by the express desire of Bridport House, that warrior was on a voyage of discovery. In common with half the males of his age in the metropolis he was already in the thrall of the wonderful Princess Bedalia. In the opinion of connoisseurs she was the only one of her kind; for the past two hundred nights she had played "to capacity" at the Frivolity Theater,