"If we," she said slowly, "have one thing to be more--what you call grateful for--than another, it is that we don't belong to your so strange country of England. Your coldness, and your long time of remaining without your _dot_ and your betrothal and your so necessaire husband, is too terrible for any girl in the Fatherland even to contemplate the pain." "Oh!" I said, feeling quite angry, "we pity _you_. You see, Comtesse, you and I can never agree." She smiled and shook her little head. "But what would you do," she said a few minutes afterwards, "if these things were not arranged? You might reach, say, twenty, or even twenty-one or twenty-two, and--" "Well, suppose I did reach twenty-one or twenty-two; surely those years are not so awful?" "But to be unbetrothed at twenty-one or twenty-two," she continued. "Why, do you not know that at twenty-five a girl--why, she is lost." "Lost?" I cried. "Well, what we call put aside--of no account. She doesn't go to dances. She stays at home with the old parents. The young sister supersedes her; she goes out all shining and beautiful, and the adored one comes her way, and she is betrothed, and gets presents and the _dot_ and the beautiful wedding, and the home where the house linen is so marvellous and the furniture so good. Then for the rest of her days she is a good housewife, and looks after the comforts of the lord of the house." "The lord of the house?" I gasped. "Her husband. Surely it is her one and only desire to think of his comforts. What is she but second to him? Oh! the chosen wife is happy, and fulfils her mission. But the unfortunate maiden who reaches the age of twenty-five, why, there is nothing for her--nothing!" The Comtesses pretty checks were flushed with vivid rose; her blue eyes darkened with horror. "Poor maiden of twenty-five!" I said. "Why, in England you are only supposed to be properly grown-up about then." "But surely," said the Comtesse, glancing at me and shrugging her shoulders--"you surely do not mean to say that at that advanced age marriages take place?" "Much more than before a girl is twenty-five. But really," I added, "I don't want to talk about marriages and _dots_; I am only a schoolgirl." The Comtesse laughed. "Why will you so speak? What else has a girl of my great nation to think of and talk of? And the mademoiselles here--what have they to think of and to talk of? Oh! it is all the same; we live for it--our _dot_, and our future husbands, and the home where he is lord and we his humble servant." "It doesn't sound at all interesting," I said; and after that my conversation with Comtesse Riki languished a little. A few days afterwards this same girl came to me when I was preparing a letter for home. I was writing in our sitting-room when she entered. She glanced quickly round her. "It is you who have the sympathy," she said.