She had blazed into young Milbrey's darkness one night in the palm-room of the Hightower Hotel, escorted by a pleased and beefy youth of his acquaintance, who later told him of their meeting at the American Embassy in Paris, and who unsuspectingly presented him. Since their meeting the young man had been her abject cavalier. The elder Milbrey, too, had met her at his son's suggestion. He had been as deeply impressed by her helplessness in the matter of a million and a half dollars of idle funds as she had been by his aristocratic bearing and enviable position in New York society.
"Sorry to have kept you waiting. The Lotus hasn't come in sight yet. Let's loaf over to the beach and have some tall, cold ones."
"Who was your elderly friend?" she asked, as they were driven slowly up the old-fashioned street.
"Oh! that's Joe Drelmer. She's not so old, you know; not a day over forty, Joe can't be; fine old stock; she was a Leydenbroek and her husband's family is one of the very oldest in New York. Awfully exclusive. Down to meet friends, but they'd not shown up, either. That reminds me; they're friends of ours, too, and I must have you meet them. They're from your part of the country—the Bines."
"The—ah—"
"Bines; family from Montana; decent enough sort; didn't know but you might have heard of them, being from your part of the country."
"Ah, I never think of that vulgar West as 'my part of the country' at all. My part is dear old Virginia, where my father, General Tulver, and his father and his father's father all lived the lives of country gentlemen, after the family came here from Devonshire. It was there Colonel Wybert wooed me, though we later removed to New Orleans." Mrs. Wybert called it "New Aw-leens."
"But it was not until my husband became interested in Montana mines that we ventured into that horrid West. So do remember not to confound me with your Western—ah—Bones,—was it not?"
"No, Bines; they'll be here presently, and you can meet them, anyway."
"Is there an old fellow—a queer old character, with them?"