ry
late," Beth said. "I have been on the sands with Count Gustav."

"Ah, that was nice, I should think," Mrs. Caldwell observed
graciously. "And what were you talking about?"

"Being married, principally," Beth answered.

Mrs. Caldwell beamed above her knitting. "And what did he say?"

"He strongly advised me not to marry if I didn't want to."

Mrs. Caldwell changed countenance. "Did he indeed?" she observed with
a sniff. Then she reflected. "And what had you been saying to draw
such a remark from him?"

"I said I didn't want to be married," Beth blurted out with an effort.

"How could you tell Count Gustav such a story, Beth?" Mrs. Caldwell
asked, shaking her head reproachfully.

"It was no story, mamma."

"Nonsense, Beth," her mother rejoined. "It is nothing but perverseness
that makes you say such things. You feel more interesting, I believe,
when you are in opposition. If I had refused to allow you to be
married, you would have been ready to run away. _I_ know girls! They
all want to be married, and they all pretend they don't. Why, when I
was a girl I thought of nothing else; but I didn't talk about it."

"Perhaps you had nothing else to think about," Beth ventured.

"And what have you to think about, pray?"

Beth clasped her hands, and her grey eyes dilated.

"Beth, don't look like that," her mother remonstrated. "You are always
acting, and it _is_ such a pity--as you will find when you go out into
the world, I am afraid, and people avoid you."

"I didn't know I was doing anything peculiar," Beth said; "and how am
I to help it if I don't know?"

"Just help it by only doing as you are told until you are able to
judge for yourself. Look at the silly way you have been talking this
afternoon! What must Count Gustav have thought of you? Never be so
silly again. You _must_ be married now, you know. When a girl lets a
man kiss her, she _has_ to marry him."

Beth had been watching her mother's fingers as she knitted until she
was half mesmerised by the bright glint of the needles; but now she
woke up and burst out laughing. "If that be the case," she said, "he
is not the only one that I shall have to marry."

Mrs. Caldwell's hands dropped on her lap, and she looked up at Beth in
dismay. "What do you mean?" she said.

"Just that," Beth answered.

"Do you mean to tell me you have allowed men to kiss you?" Mrs.
Caldwell cried.

Beth looked up as if trying to keep her countenance.

"You wicked girl,