"A French Marquis came to N'York last fall," pursued Lady Wargrave, "who was the cutest thing in the way of European nobility you ever struck. He talked English like an Amurrcan, and was a poifectly lovely man to look at. One of my girl friends has just gotten engaged to him; I had the noos from her last mail. Of course I wrote back that I was enchanted, but if he had wanted _me_ there'd have been no Marquise yet awhile. But I wasn't rich enough anyway. The Frenchmen who come over are always out for the dollars, the Englishmen let them go by sometimes. Wargrave did. He could have had one of our big fortunes, if he wouldn't rather have had me." Poor little Beatrix! She was spared the hammer-stroke of hearing her lover's name in public, but there was never any doubt in her mind that it was he. She turned dead white, and kept her eyes fixed upon Lady Wargrave until she had finished her speech and passed on lightly to some other topic. Then she turned to her neighbour and listened to something he was saying to her, but without hearing it, and she was obliged to leave off peeling the orange she held because her hands were trembling. There happened to be nobody at that end of the table, listening to Lady Wargrave, who could connect her speech with Beatrix, except Ella Carruthers. Beatrix, when she had sat still and silent for a moment, looked at her suddenly with an appealing look, and found her eyes fixed upon her with the deepest concern. That enabled her to overcome her tremors. She would have broken down if Ella, by any word, had drawn attention to her. She suddenly turned to her neighbour and began to chatter. He was an elderly man, interested in his dinner, who had not noticed her sudden pallor. As she talked, her colour came back to her, and she hardly left off talking until the sign was given, rather prematurely, for the ladies to leave the table. Her knees were trembling as she rose from her seat, and she was glad of Ella's arm to support her as she walked from the room. "No," she said, in answer to a low-spoken word of going upstairs. "I don't want to. Ask if it's he--but I know it is--and tell Caroline to come and tell me." She made her way to a sofa in a corner of the big drawing-room, and sat down, while the rest of the women clustered around the chimney-piece. She sat there waiting, without thought and without much sensation. She was conscious only of revolt against the blow that had been dealt her, and determination to support it. Presently Caroline came to her, her soft eyes full of trouble. "My darling!" she said tenderly, sitting down by her. "You needn't say it," she said quickly. "If he's like that I'm not going to make a scene. Pretend to talk to me, and presently I'll go and talk to the others." She had an ardent wish to throw it all off from her, not to care, and to show that she didn't care. But her knees were trembling again, and she could not have walked across the room.