Men who lived for ideas were, in fact, to
one for whom facts sufficed always a little worrying! A movement from
Barbara brought him back to actuality. Was the possessor of that crown
of hair and those divine young shoulders the little Babs who had
ridden with him in the Row? Time was certainly the Devil! Her eyes were
searching for something; and following the direction of that glance,
Lord Dennis found himself observing Miltoun. What a difference between
those two! Both no doubt in the great trouble of youth; which sometimes,
as he knew too well, lasted on almost to old age. It was a curious look
the child was giving her brother, as if asking him to help her. Lord
Dennis had seen in his day many young creatures leave the shelter of
their freedom and enter the house of the great lottery; many, who had
drawn a prize and thereat lost forever the coldness of life; many too,
the light of whose eyes had faded behind the shutters of that house,
having drawn a blank. The thought of 'little' Babs on the threshold of
that inexorable saloon, filled him with an eager sadness; and the sight
of the two men watching for her, waiting for her, like hunters, was to
him distasteful. In any case, let her not, for Heaven's sake, go ranging
as far as that red fellow of middle age, who might have ideas, but
had no pedigree; let her stick to youth and her own order, and marry
the--young man, confound him, who looked like a Greek god, of the wrong
period, having grown a moustache.
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