“Tell us all about it,” she said finally to Miss Lavington. The girl looked up quickly and then dropped her eyes again. “There isn’t much to tell,” she began. The others were listening now. Even Kan Ato, smiling in her pensive, oriental way, leaned far forward so as not to lose a word. “He isn’t rich and he hasn’t any place in Surrey--or anywhere else that I know of, except perhaps in India,” she went on. “But he is young and handsome. We used to know each other when we were children--he is a sort of cousin--but I haven’t seen him for years. We used to be very much in love with each other.” She smiled. “My father writes me that he says he is still in love with me, and so--perhaps we are to be married.” “I knew it,” sighed the girl on the tiger-rug, in a satisfied sort of way. The Beauty looked at the English girl curiously. “And you haven’t seen him for years? and yet you think of marrying him! How do you know you will love him now?--you are both changed--you may be two totally different people from the children who fell in love.” She had spoken vehemently and quickly, and Miss Lavington gazed at her with languid surprise. “You are not in love with him yourself?” she said, smilingly. The girl made a quick, impatient gesture. “I am speaking seriously,” she said. “You are several years younger than I am, and you don’t know what you are doing. Don’t let your father--don’t let anyone--persuade you to bind yourself to a man you don’t know, whose life has been so vitally different from your own as to render the possibility of sympathy between you very slight.” Miss Lavington looked at her rather coldly. “You are interesting yourself unnecessarily,” she said; “I loved him not so many years ago--it cannot be possible that so short a time would change us completely.” The Beauty leaned her head back with sudden wearied look on her face. “A few years at our time of life makes all the difference in the world,” she said, earnestly. “What pleased and interested and fascinated us at eighteen might very possibly disappoint and disgust us at twenty or twenty-two. I do not mean to preach,” she said, smiling deprecatingly and turning to the rest, “but you know as well as I what an influence this college life has on us, and how hard it is to go back to former conditions. If we get stronger here we also get less adaptable. We are all affected by the earnestness and the culture and advancement of the life we lead here for four years, whether we will or no, and it is very hard to go back!” They were all looking at her in amazement. The Beauty was not much given to that sort of thing. She stopped abruptly as if herself aware of the sensation she was creating, and laughed rather constrainedly.