After that the conversation became general, Anstruthers somehow managing to take the lead. Lisbeth opened her eyes. Was this the boy she had left in the moonlight at Pen’yllan? The young simpleton who had been at her feet on the sands, spouting poetry, and adoring her, and making himself her grateful slave? The impetuous, tiresome lad, who had blushed, and raved, and sighed, and, in the end, had succeeded in wearying her so completely? Three years had made a difference. Here was a sublime young potentate, wondrously altered, and absolutely wondrously well-looking. The mustache she had secretly sneered at in its budding youth, was long, silken, brown; the slight, long figure had developed into the fairest of proportions; the guileless freshness of color had died away, and left an interesting, if rather significant pallor. Having been a boy so long, he seemed to have become a man all at once; and as he stood talking to Mrs. Despard, and occasionally turning to Lisbeth, his serenity of manner did him credit. Was it possible that he knew what to say? It appeared so. He did not blush; his hands and feet evidently did not incommode him. He was talking vivaciously, and with the air of a man of the world. He was making Mrs. Despard laugh, and there was every now and then a touch of daring, yet well-bred sarcasm in what he was saying. Bah! He was as much older as she herself was. And yet, incongruous as the statement may appear, she hardly liked him any the better. “How long,” she asked, abruptly, of Bertie Lyon, “has Mr. Anstruthers been in London?” Lyon, that radiant young dandy, was almost guilty of staring at her amazedly. “Beg pardon,” he said. “Did you say ‘how long!’” “Yes.” The young man managed to recover himself. Perhaps, after all, she was as ignorant about Anstruthers as she seemed to be, and it was not one of her confounded significant speeches. They were nice enough people, of course, and Mrs. Despard was the sort of woman whose parties a fellow always liked to be invited to; but then they were not exactly in the set to which Anstruthers belonged, and of which he himself was a shining member. “Well, you see,” he said, “he has spent the greater part of his life in London; but it was not until about three years ago that he began to care much about society. He came into his money then, when young Scarsbrook shot himself accidentally, in Scotland, and he has lived pretty rapidly since,” with an innocent faith in Miss Crespigny’s ability to comprehend even a modest bit of slang. “He is a tremendously talented fellow, Anstruthers--paints, and writes, and takes a turn at everything. He is the art-critic on the _Cynic_; and people talk about what he does, all the more because he has no need to do anything; and it makes him awfully popular.” Lisbeth laughed; a rather savage little laugh. “What is it that amuses you?” asked Lyon. “Not Anstruthers, I hope.”