"Let us go out and gather some roses with the moonlight and dew upon them. They will be so sweet," she said, winningly. "And, please, will you call me Maud, and let me call you Beatrix? We are both too young to be ceremonious with each other." They went down into the graveled paths where the September moonlight shone clear and white, and then Maud Merivale seemed to forget all about the roses. "_Ma chère_, I am dying to know how you like the count!" she cried. "He is very nice, I suppose," said Laurel, vaguely, her thoughts elsewhere. "'Very nice'--oh, dear, what faint praise for my gallant adorer!" laughed the lady. "Why, my dear Beatrix, all the girls in New York vote him a love, a darling, an Adonis, and above all, a splendid catch! They are all jealous of me! Any one of them could willingly cut my ears off for having taken him captive!" "Then you are to marry him?" said innocent Laurel, taking a vague pleasure in the thought as suggested by the lady's words. "_Cela depend._ I can marry him if I choose," laughed the lady. "You must have observed how devoted he is." Laurel had _not_ observed it; but she wisely said nothing. Maud Merivale shook her golden frizzes in the moonlight. "I shall not marry him. It is useless his breaking his heart over me," she said. "I am too true to my old love." "Your dead husband," Laurel said, gently. "Pshaw, Beatrix"--impatiently--"what are you talking of? Do you not know that Mr. Merivale was an old man? It was not at all a love match: it was because he was rich." "Pardon," Laurel murmured, faintly, and she recalled to herself, as she often did, Clarice's favorite song of "Dollars and Dimes." "It is all right. The old man died soon, and left me a fortune," said the young widow, heartlessly. "But as for loving him, or having any sentimental _tendresse_ over his memory--pshaw, I am not such a little simpleton as that, my dear! no one could expect it," plaintively. "Beatrix," this with startling suddenness--"tell me what do you think of your host--of St. Leon Le Roy?" CHAPTER XX. The change of conversation was so sudden that Laurel started and shivered uncomfortably. "Are you cold, my dear?" asked Maud Merivale. "I felt chilly for a moment," Laurel answered. "It does not matter. You were saying--" "I asked you what you thought of St. Leon Le Roy, Beatrix. Is he not"--enthusiastically--"grand, handsome, noble--a very king among men?" Little thrills of icy coldness shot along Laurel's tingling nerves. She remembered his cold, proud bearing to her, as contrasted with his winning and tender demeanor to Maud Merivale that evening. She answered with impulsive bitterness: "He may be all that to you, Mrs. Merivale, but to me he has always seemed cold, hard, stern!" "Poor St. Leon!--ah! I know who warped his generous nature so," sighed the lady. "Beatrix, I am so fond of you I have a mind to tell you my story--mine and St. Leon's."