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.