"Yes, I know he did. It's a great feather in his cap. Most fathers would have gone about purring. He was a good-looking fellow too, wasn't he? I never saw him myself, but my brother Geoffrey says he was." This was a line she would rather have kept off of. "Yes, I suppose he was," she said judicially. "He was a lot older than me, and had seen a great deal of the world. Of course that flattered me. I don't think a younger man would have swept me off my feet as he did." The Marquis de Lassigny had been thirty-six at the time of his quick wooing of Beatrix. Richard Mansergh was thirty-two, and had also seen a good deal of the world. This statement brought him pleasure. "I see now," said Beatrix, speaking very calmly, "that I thought of him as possessing all sorts of qualities that weren't really his. Of course I thought I knew a great deal about men, as I had been out a whole season, and had seen so many of them. Now I see how little I really knew." She was getting on very nicely, but his next words brought a check. "But you did love him," he said, uncompromisingly. "You wanted to give him everything that was in you." How true that was she felt a pang in remembering. Whatever his love for her had been, hers had been for him the entire surrender of all she was or would be. She was on her defence. "I told you I didn't know enough," she said. "But I had never loved anybody before--in that way. Of course I gave all the best that was in me." He caught his breath. It wouldn't have been she if she hadn't done that. But what a treasure for a man to throw away! "He can't have been fit to black your boots," he said, "or he'd have waited for you for twenty years." She felt the need of a lighter note. "I should have been old and ugly by that time," she said. "You'd have been neither. But if you'd lost all your looks you'd have been just the same." She was touched by the almost impersonal conviction in his speech, and comforted by his belief in her. But she was not yet ready. "It's very kind of you to say that," she said. "He didn't think so. And I'm very glad he didn't now. It took me a little time to get over it, but I _have_ got over it. I don't want anything that I haven't got now. I love my family, and they love me, and we're all going to be happy together for a long time. Now, I think we'll go in." He rose obediently and walked back to the house by her side. She had given him no opening such as he ardently longed for, no response that might bid him hope. But he could wait for that. It would come in time, if mortal man could do anything to induce it. As for her, she was in a more emotional state than appeared on the surface. Such an experience as she had undergone--to love for the first time, and to have the love rejected--could scarcely help hardening a nature such as hers, yielding and trustful. But the hardening would not set in until the wound became a scar; and he had opened it again, and delayed the process.