Page:Vance--The rass bowl.djvu/20

 He was Daniel Maitland, Esquire; for whom no further introduction should be required, after mention of the fact that he was, and remains, the identical gentleman of means and position in the social and financial worlds, whose somewhat sober but sincere and whole-hearted participation in the wildest of conceivable escapades had earned him the affectionate regard of the younger set, together with the sobriquet of "Mad Maitland."

His companions of the day, the four in the tonneau, were in that humor of subdued yet vibrant excitement which is apt to attend the conclusion of a long, hard drive over country roads. Maitland, on the other hand, (judging him by his preoccupied pose), was already weary of, if not bored by, the hare-brained enterprise which, initiated on the spur of an idle moment and directly due to a thoughtless remark of his own, had brought him a hundred miles (or so) through the heat of a broiling afternoon, accompanied by spirits as ardent and irresponsible as his own, in search of the dubious distraction afforded by the night side of the city.