Alicia’s blue eyes--beautiful eyes they were, so clear, so soft, so delicately shaded--opened wide. “Why, Trixy, I thought----” “So it was,” cut in Beatrice. “But that’s off. Close the door”--they had just entered the sitting room of the charming suite set aside for “darling Beatrice”--“and I’ll tell you all about it--that is, all I can tell just now.” “Oh, you and Hanky will make it up----” “Never! Whoever I may marry, it’ll not be he.” Alicia looked shocked, grieved. And she was shocked and grieved. But underneath this propriety of friendly emotion she had already begun to consider that, if this were really true, Peter would return to the ranks of the eligibles--and he was through Harvard, while Heck Richmond was a junior and only a few months older than herself. An inexcusable duplicity--that is, inexcusable in any but a human being circumstanced as was Alicia. Beatrice laughed at her bosom friend’s mournful expression. “Oh, drop it,” cried she. “You know Peter is no real loss. He’s all right, of course--a clean, decent fellow, with a talent for dressing himself well. But no one would ever get excited about him.” “Does anybody get excited about anybody, nowadays?” laughed Alicia. Beatrice nodded; into her eyes and out again flashed a look that could not but put so shrewd and sympathetic a friend as Allie into possession of her secret. “Who?” said Allie breathlessly. “The Count? Oh, Trixy, you’re not going to marry away off----” “Not the Count,” was Beatrice’s quick, disdainful interruption. “What do you take me for? He’s shorter than I and horribly old--over forty.” “I don’t think age matters in a _man_,” observed the charitable Alicia. “I do,” retorted Beatrice. “Not, of course, if one’s marrying for--for other things than love. But I couldn’t love an elderly man.” “Is forty elderly?” “Isn’t it?” replied Beatrice. “But who is he?” implored Allie, all a-quiver with curiosity. Beatrice permitted a beatific expression bordering on fatuous folly to overspread her fair, young face. “Do you remember--down at Red Hill--the last time you were there--the biggest, grandest, handsomest man you ever saw----” “The artist!” cried Allie in dismay. “Oh, dearest, I thought you were just flirting. And you are. You wouldn’t-- Your mother’d never--never--consent. Isn’t he--poor?” “How can you talk like that?” exclaimed Beatrice, with all the new convert’s energy in indignation. “Well--one has got to live, you know,” urged Allie. “And if he’s poor--and your father doesn’t consent----” Beatrice laughed curtly--she had many mannerisms that reminded one of her father. “I’m not married yet--nor engaged.” “Have you talked with your father and mother?” inquired her worldly wise friend. Miss Richmond again gave a sweetened and feminine version of her father’s sardonic laugh. “That’s why I’m here. I’ve broken with father.” “Oh, Trixy!” exclaimed Allie in terror. “You _can’t_ do that!”