Milestones - 1912 Author:Arnold Bennett Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ACT II The Scene represents the same drawing-room as in Act I. But twenty-five years have passed. We are now in the year 1885. Consequently great changes have... more » occurred. The furniture has been re-arranged and added to. The flowered carpet of the first Act has given place to an Indian carpet. There are new ornaments amongst some of the old ones. The room is over-crowded with furniture m the taste of the period. It is about four o'clock of an afternoon m June. The curtains are drawn hack and the sun is shining brightly outside. [Rose Sibley, now Mrs. JohnRhead, forty-six years of age and dressed in the fashion of 1885, her hair slightly grey at the temples, is seated writing some notes at a desk near the windows.] [Ned Pym enters from the hall, followed by John Rhead. The former has developed into a well-preserved, florid, slightly self-sufficient man of forty-six. The latter, now fifty, has not changed so much physically except that his hair is grey and his features have become muchfirmer. But hia manner has grown even more self-assured than it was in the first Act. He is m fact a person of authority; the successful man whose word is law.] John. Oh, you are there, Rosie. I've brought a person of importance to see you. Rose [rising]. Ned [They shake hands.] Ned. Now please don't say what you were going to say. Rose. And what was I going to say? Ned. That I'm quite a stranger since I came into the title. Rose [curtseying and teasing]. Lord Monk- hurst, we are only too flattered — I was merely going to say that you look younger than ever. Ned [seriously]. Don't I? That's what everyone says. Time leaves me quite unchanged, don't you know. John. In every way. How old are you, Ned? Ned [with a sigh]. Well, I shall never see thirty again. John. What a...« less