Milbrey, of New York. Her father and mother—fine people, the real thing, I judge—were with her, members of a party Rulon Shepler has with him on his car. They've been here all day; went through the mine; had lunch with them, and later a walk with her, they leaving at 5.30 for the East. We got on fairly well, considering. She is a wonder, if anybody cross-examines you. She is about your height, I should judge, about five feet four, though not so plump as you; still her look of slenderness is deceptive. She's one of the build that aren't so big as they look, nor yet so small as they look. Thoroughbred is the word for her, style and action, as the horse people say, perfect. The poise of her head, her mettlesome manner, her walk, show that she's been bred up like a Derby winner. Her face is the one all the aristocrats are copied from, finely cut nose, chin firm but dainty, lips just delicately full and the reddest ever, and her colour when she has any a rose-pink. I don't know that I can give you her eyes. You only see first that they're deep and clear, but as near as anything they are the warm slatish lavender blue you see in the little fall asters. She has so much hair it makes her head look small, a sort of light chestnut, with warmish streaks in it. Transparent is another word for her. You can look right through her—eyes and skin are so clear. Her nature too is the frank, open kind, "step in and examine our stock; no trouble to show goods" and all that, and she is so beautifully unconscious of her beauty that it goes double. At times she gave me a queer little impression of being older at the game than I am, though she can't be a day over twenty, but I guess that's because she's been around in society so much. Probably she'd be called the typical New York girl, if you wanted to talk talky talk.
Now I've told you everything, except that the people all asked kindly after you, especially her mother and a Mrs. Drelmer, who's a four-horse team all by herself. Oh, yes! No, I can't remember very well; some kind of a brown walking skirt, short, and high boots and one of those blue striped shirt-waists, the squeezy looking kind, and when we went to walk, a red plaid golf cape; and for general all-around dearness—say, the other entries would all turn green and have to be withdrawn. If any one thinks this thing is going to end here you make a book on it right away; take all you can get. Little Willie Lushlets was her brother—a lovely boy if you get to talking reckless. With love to Lady Abercrombie, and trusting, my dear Countess, to have the pleasure of meeting you at Henley a fortnight hence, I remain,
Most cordially yours,
E. MALVERN DEVYR ST. TREVORS,
Bart. & Notary Public.
From Mrs. Joseph Drelmer to the Hon. Cecil G. H. Mauburn, New York.
EN ROUTE, August 28th.
MY DEAR MAUBURN:—Ever hear of the tribe of Bines? If not, you need to. The father, immensely wealthy, died a bit ago, leaving a widow and two children, one of the latter being a marriageable daughter in more than the merely technical sense. There is also a grandfather, now a little descended into the vale of years, who, they tell me, has almost as many dollars as you or I would know what to do with, a queer old chap who lounges about the mountains and looks as if he might have anything but money. We met the son and the old man at one of their mines yesterday. They have a private car as large as Shepler's and even more sybaritic, and they'd been making a tour of inspection over their properties. They lunched with us. Knowing the Milbreys, you will divine the warmth of their behaviour toward the son. It was too funny at first. Avice was the only one to suspect at once that he was the very considerable personage he is, and so she promptly sequestered him, with a skill born of her long practice, in the depths of the earth, somewhere near China, I fancy. Her dear parents were furious. Dressed as one of the miners they took him to be an employee. The whole party, taking the cue from outraged parenthood, treated him icily when he emerged from one of those subterranean galleries with that tender sprig of girlishness. That is, we were icy until, on the way up, he remaining in the depths, Avice's dear mother began to rebuke the thoughtless minx for her indiscretion of strolling through the earth with a working person. Then Avice, sweet chatterbox, with joyful malice revealed that the young man, whose name none of us had caught, was Bines, and that he owned the mine we were in, and she didn't know how many others, nor did she believe he knew himself. You should have felt the temperature rise. It went up faster than we were going.
By the time we reached the surface the two Milbreys wore looks that would have made the angel of peace and good-will look full of hatred and distrust. Nothing would satisfy them but that we wait to thank the young Croesus for his courtesy. I waited because I remembered the daughter, and Oldaker and the Angstead twins waited out of decency. And when the genius of the mine appeared from out his golden catacombs we fell upon him in desperate kindness.
Later in the day I learned from him that he expects to bring his mother and sister to New York this fall, and that they mean to make their home there hereafter. Of course that means that the girl has notions of marriage. What made me think so quickly of her is that in San Francisco, at a theatre last winter, she was pointed out to me, and while I do you not the injustice of supposing it would make the least difference to you, she is rather a beauty, you'll find; figure fullish, yellow hair, and a good-natured, well-featured, pleasing sort of face; a bit rococo in manner, I suspect; a little too San Francisco, as so many of these Western beauties are, but you'd not mind that, and a year in New York will tone her down anyway.
Now if your dear uncle will only confer a lasting benefit upon the world and his title upon you, by paying the only debt he is ever liable to pay, I am persuaded you could be the man here. I know nothing of how the fortune was left, nor of its extent, except that it's said to be stiffish, and out here that means a big, round sum. The reason I write promptly is that you may not go out of the country just now. That sweet little Milbrey chit—really, Avice is far too old now for ingenue parts—has not only grappled the son with hooks of steel, but from remarks the good mother dropped concerning the fine qualities of her son, she means to convert the daughter's dot into Milbrey prestige, also. What a glorious double stroke it would be, after all their years of trying. However, with your title, even in prospective, Fred Milbrey is no rival for you to fear, providing you are on the ground as soon as he, which is why I wish you to stay in New York.
I am indeed gratified that you have broken off whatever affair there may have been between you and that music-hall person. Really, you know, though they talk so about us, a young man can't mess about with that sort of thing in New York as he can in London. So I'm glad she's gone back, and as she is in no position to harm you I should pay no attention to her threats. What under heaven did the creature expect? Why should she have wanted to marry you?
I shall see you probably in another fortnight.
You know that Milbrey girl must get her effrontery direct from where they make it. She pretended that at first she took young Bines for what we all took him, an employee of the mine. You can almost catch them winking at each other, when she tells it, and dear mamma with such beautiful resignation, says, "My Avice is so impulsively democratic." Dear Avice, you know, is really quite as impulsive as the steel bridge our train has just rattled over. Sincerely,
JOSEPHINE PRESTON DRELMER.
From Miss Avice Milbrey to Mrs. Cornelia Van Geist, New York.
Mütterchen, dearest, I feel like that green hunter you had to sell last spring—the one that would go at a fence with the most perfect display of serious intentions, and then balk and bolt when it came to jumping. Can it be that I, who have been trained from the cradle to the idea of marrying for money, will bolt the gate after all the expense and pains lavished upon my education to this end; after the years spent in learning how to enchant, subdue, and exploit the most useful of all animals, and the most agreeable, barring a few? And yet, right when I'm the fittest—twenty-four years old, knowing all my good points and just how to coerce the most admiration for each, able nicely to calculate the exact disturbing effect of the ensemble upon any poor male, and feeling confident of my excessively eligible parti when I decide for him—in this situation, striven for so earnestly,
