IV

In point of fact, as the latter would have said, Mrs. Westgate

disembarked by the next mid-May on the British coast. She was

accompanied by her sister, but unattended by any other member of her

family. To the lost comfort of a husband respectably to produce, as she

phrased it, she was now habituated; she had made half a dozen journeys to

Europe under this drawback of looking ill-temperedly separated and yet of

being thanklessly enslaved, and she still decently accounted for her

spurious singleness to wondering friends on this side of the Atlantic by

formulating the grim truth—the only grimness indeed in all her view—that

in America there is no leisure-class. The two ladies came up to London

and alighted at Jones’s Hotel, where Mrs. Westgate, who had made on

former occasions the most agreeable impression at this establishment,

received an obsequious greeting. Bessie Alden had felt much excited

about coming to England; she had expected the “associations” would carry

her away and counted on the joy of treating her eyes and her imagination

to all the things she had read of in poets and historians. She was very

fond of the poets and historians, of the picturesque, of the past, of

associations, of relics and reverberations of greatness; so that on

coming into the great English world, where strangeness and familiarity

would go hand in hand, she was prepared for a swarm of fresh emotions.

They began very promptly—these tender fluttering sensations; they began

with the sight of the beautiful English landscape, whose dark richness

was quickened and brightened by the season; with the carpeted fields and

flowering hedge-rows, as she looked at them from the window of the train;

with the spires of the rural churches peeping above the rook-haunted

tree-tops; with the oak-studded, deer-peopled parks, the ancient homes,

the cloudy light, the speech, the manners, all the significant

differences. Mrs. Westgate’s response was of course less quick and less

extravagant, and she gave but a wandering attention to her sister’s

ejaculations and rhapsodies.

“You know my enjoyment of England’s not so intellectual as Bessie’s,” she

said to several of her friends in the course of her visit to this

country. “And yet if it’s not intellectual I can’t say it’s in the least

sensual. I don’t think I can quite say what it is, my enjoyment of

England.” When once it was settled that the two ladies should come

abroad and should spend a few weeks in London and perhaps in other parts

of the celebrated island on their way to the Continent, they of course

exchanged a good many allusions to their English acquaintance.

“It will certainly be much nicer having friends there,” was a remark that

had one day dropped from Bessie while she sat on the sunny deck of the

steamer, at her sister’s feet, from under which spread conveniently a

large soft rug.

“Whom do you mean by friends?” Mrs. Westgate had then invited the girl to

say.

“All those English gentlemen you’ve known and entertained. Captain

Littledale, for instance. And Lord Lambeth and Mr. Beaumont,” the girl

further mentioned.

“Do you expect them to give us a very grand reception?”

She reflected a moment; she was addicted, as we know, to fine reflexion.

“Well—to be nice.”

“My poor sweet child!” murmured her sister.

“What have I said that’s so silly?” Bessie asked.

“You’re a little too simple; just a little. It’s very becoming, but it

pleases people at your expense.”

“I’m certainly too simple to understand you,” said our young lady.

Mrs. Westgate had an ominous pause. “Shall I tell you a story?”

“If you’d be so good. That’s what’s frequently done to amuse simple

people.”

Mrs. Westgate consulted her memory while her companion sat at gaze of the

shining sea. “Did you ever hear of the Duke of Green-Erin?”

“I think not,” said Bessie.

“Well, it’s no matter,” her sister went on.

“It’s a proof of my simplicity.”

“My story’s meant to illustrate that of some other people,” said Mrs.

Westgate. “The Duke of Green-Erin’s what they call in England a great

swell, and some five years ago he came to America. He spent most of his

time in New York, and in New York he spent his days and his nights at the

Butterworths’. You’ve heard at least of the Butterworths. _Bien_. They

did everything in the world for him—the poor Butterworths—they turned

themselves inside out. They gave him a dozen dinner-parties and balls,

and were the means of his being invited to fifty more. At first he used

to come into Mrs. Butterworth’s box at the opera in a tweed

travelling-suit, but some one stopped that. At any rate he had a

beautiful time and they parted the best friends in the world. Two years

elapse and the Butterworths come abroad and go to London. The first

thing they see in all the papers—in England those things are in the most

prominent place—is that the Duke of Green-Erin has arrived in town for

the season. They wait a little, and then Mr. Butterworth—as polite as

ever—goes and leaves a card. They wait a little more; the visit’s not

returned; they wait three weeks: _silence de mort_, the Duke gives no

sign. The Butterworths see a lot of other people, put down the Duke of

Green-Erin as a rude ungrateful man and forget all about him. One fine

day they go to Ascot Races—where they meet him face to face. He stares a

moment and then comes up to Mr. Butterworth, taking something from his

pocket-book—something which proves to be a banknote. ‘I’m glad to see

you, Mr. Butterworth,’ he says, ‘so that I can pay you that ten pounds I

lost to you in New York. I saw the other day you remembered our bet;

here are the ten pounds, Mr. Butterworth. Good-bye, Mr. Butterworth.’

And off he goes, and that’s the last they see of the Duke of Green-Erin.”

“Is that your story?” asked Bessie Alden.

“Don’t tell me you don’t think it interesting!” her sister replied.

“I don’t think I believe it,” said the girl.

“Ah, then,” cried Mrs. Westgate, “mademoiselle isn’t of such an unspotted

_candeur_! Believe it or not as you like. There’s at any rate no smoke

without fire.”

“Is that the way,” asked Bessie after a moment, “that you expect your

friends to treat you?”

“I defy them to treat me very ill, for the simple reason that I shall

never give them the opportunity. With the best will in the world, in

that case, they can’t be very disobliging.”

Our young lady for a time said nothing. “I don’t see what makes you talk

that way,” she then resumed. “The English are a great people.”

“Exactly; and that’s just the way they’ve grown great—by dropping you

when you’ve ceased to be useful. People say they aren’t clever, but I

find them prodigiously clever.”

“You know you’ve liked them—all the Englishmen you’ve seen,” Bessie

brought up.

“They’ve liked _me_,” her sister returned; “so I think I’d rather put it.

And of course one likes that.”

Bessie pursued for some moments her studies in sea-green. “Well,” she

said, “whether they like me or not, I mean to like them. And happily,”

she wound up, “Lord Lambeth doesn’t owe me ten pounds.”

During the first few days after their arrival at Jones’s Hotel our

charming Americans were much occupied with what they would have called

looking about them. They found occasion to make numerous purchases, and

their opportunities for inquiry and comment were only those supplied by

the deferential London shopmen. Bessie Alden, even in driving from the

station, felt to intensity the many-voiced appeal of the capital of the

race from which she had sprung, and, at the risk of exhibiting her as a

person of vulgar tastes, it must be recorded that for many days she

desired no higher pleasure than to roll about the crowded streets in the

public conveyances. They presented to her attentive eyes strange

pictures and figures, and it’s at least beneath the dignity of our

historic muse to enumerate the trivial objects and incidents in which the

imagination of this simple young lady from Boston lost itself. It may be

freely mentioned, however, that whenever, after a round of visits in Bond

Street and Regent Street, she was about to return with her sister to

Jones’s Hotel, she desired they should, at whatever cost to convenience,

be driven home by way of Westminster Abbey. She had begun by asking if

it wouldn’t be possible to take the Tower _en route_ to their lodgings;

but it happened that at a more primitive stage of her culture Mrs.

Westgate had paid a visit to this venerable relic, which she spoke of

ever afterwards, vaguely, as a dreadful disappointment. She thus

expressed the liveliest disapproval of any attempt to combine historical

researches with the purchase of hair-brushes and notepaper. The most she

would consent to do in the line of backward brooding was to spend half an

hour at Madame Tussaud’s, where she saw several dusty wax effigies of

members of the Royal Family. It was made clear to Bessie that if she

wished to go to the Tower she must get some one else to take her. Bessie

expressed hereupon an earnest disposition to go alone; but in respect to

this proposal as well Mrs. Westgate had the cold sense of complications.

“Remember,” she said, “that you’re not in your innocent little Boston.

It’s not a question of walking up and down Beacon Street.” With which

she went on to explain that there were two classes of American girls in

Europe—those who walked about alone and those who didn’t. “You happen to

belong, my dear,” she said to her sister, “to the class that doesn’t.”

“It’s only,” laughed Bessie, though all yearningly, “because you happen

quite arbitrarily to place me.” And she devoted much private meditation

to this question of effecting a visit to the Tower of London.

Suddenly it seemed as if the problem might be solved; the two ladies at

Jones’s Hotel received a visit from Willie Woodley. So was familiarly

designated a young American who had sailed from New York a few days after

their own departure and who, enjoying some freedom of acquaintance with

them in that city, had lost no time, on his arrival in London, in coming

to pay them his respects. He had in fact gone to see them directly after

going to see his tailor; than which there can be no greater exhibition of

promptitude on the part of a young American just installed at the Charing

Cross Hotel. He was a slight, mild youth, without high colour but with

many elegant forms, famous for the authority with which he led the

“German” in New York. He was indeed, by the young ladies who habitually

figured in such evolutions, reckoned “the best dancer in the world”; it

was in those terms he was always spoken of and his pleasant identity

indicated. He was the most convenient gentle young man, for almost any

casual light purpose, it was possible to meet; he was beautifully

dressed—“in the English style”—and knew an immense deal about London. He

had been at Newport during the previous summer, at the time of our young

Englishmen’s visit, and he took extreme pleasure in the society of Bessie

Alden, whom he never addressed but as “Miss Bessie.” She immediately

arranged with him, in the presence of her sister, that he should guide

her to the scene of Lady Jane Grey’s execution.

“You may do as you please,” said Mrs. Westgate. “Only—if you desire the

information—it is not the custom here for young ladies to knock about

London with wild young men.”

“Miss Bessie has waltzed with me so often—not to call it so wildly,” the

young man returned, “that she can surely go out with me in a jog-trot

cab.”

“I consider public waltzing,” said Mrs. Westgate, “the most innocent,

because the most guarded and regulated, pleasure of our time.”

“It’s a jolly compliment to our time!” Mr. Woodley cried with a laugh of

the most candid significance.

“I don’t see why I should regard what’s done here,” Bessie pursued. “Why

should I suffer the restrictions of a society of which I enjoy none of

the privileges?”

“That’s very good—very good,” her friend applauded.

“Oh, go to the Tower and feel the axe if you like!” said Mrs. Westgate.

“I consent to your going with Mr. Woodley; but I wouldn’t let you go with

an Englishman.”

“Miss Bessie wouldn’t care to go with an Englishman!” Mr. Woodley

declared with an asperity doubtless not unnatural in a young man who,

dressing in a manner that I have indicated and knowing a great deal, as I

have said, about London, saw no reason for drawing these sharp

distinctions. He agreed upon a day with Miss Bessie—a day of that same

week; while an ingenious mind might perhaps have traced a connexion

between the girl’s reference to her lack of social privilege or festal

initiation and a question she asked on the morrow as she sat with her

sister at luncheon.

“Don’t you mean to write to—to any one?”

“I wrote this morning to Captain Littledale,” Mrs. Westgate replied.

“But Mr. Woodley believes Captain Littledale away in India.”

“He said he thought he had heard so; he knows nothing about it.”

For a moment Bessie said nothing more; then at last, “And don’t you

intend to write to—to Mr. Beaumont?” she inquired.

Her sister waited with a look at her. “You mean to Lord Lambeth.”

“I said Mr. Beaumont because he was—at Newport—so good a friend of

yours.”

Mrs. Westgate prolonged the attitude of sisterly truth. “I don’t really

care two straws for Mr. Beaumont.”

“You were certainly very nice to him.”

“I’m very nice to every one,” said Mrs. Westgate simply.

Nothing indeed could have been simpler save perhaps the way Bessie smiled

back: “To every one but me.”

Her sister continued to look at her. “Are you in love with Lord

Lambeth?”

Our young woman stared a moment, and the question was too unattended with

any train even to make her shy. “Not that I know of.”

“Because if you are,” Mrs. Westgate went on, “I shall certainly not send

for him.”

“That proves what I said,” Bessie gaily insisted—“that you’re not really

nice to me.”

“It would be a poor service, my dear child,” said her sister.

“In what sense? There’s nothing _against_ Lord Lambeth that I know of.”

Mrs. Westgate seemed to cover much country in a few moments. “You _are_

in love with him then?”

Bessie stared again, but this time blushing a little. “Ah, if you’ll not

be serious we won’t mention him again.”

For some minutes accordingly Lord Lambeth was shrouded in silence, and it

was Mrs. Westgate who, at the end of this period, removed the ban. “Of

course I shall let him know we’re here. I think he’d be hurt—justly

enough—if we should go away without seeing him. It’s fair to give him a

chance to come and thank me for the kindness we showed him. But I don’t

want to seem eager.”

“Neither do I,” said Bessie very simply.

“Though I confess,” her companion added, “that I’m curious to see how

he’ll behave.”

“He behaved very well at Newport.”

“Newport isn’t London. At Newport he could do as he liked; but here it’s

another affair. He has to have an eye to consequences.”

“If he had more freedom then at Newport,” argued Bessie, “it’s the more

to his credit that he behaved well; and if he has to be so careful here

it’s possible he’ll behave even better.”

“Better, better?” echoed her sister a little impatiently. “My dear

child, what do you mean by better and what’s your point of view?”

Bessie wondered. “What do _you_ mean by my point of view?”

“Don’t you care for Lord Lambeth—a tiny speck?” Mrs. Westgate demanded.

This time Bessie Alden took it with still deeper reserve. She slowly got

up from table, turning her face away. “You’ll oblige me by not talking

so.”

Mrs. Westgate sat watching her for some moments as she moved slowly about

the room and went and stood at the window. “I’ll write to him this

afternoon,” she said at last.

“Do as you please!” Bessie answered; after which she turned round. “I’m

not afraid to say I like Lord Lambeth. I like him very much.”

Mrs. Westgate bethought herself. “He’s not clever.”

“Well, there have been clever people whom I’ve disliked,” the girl said;

“so I suppose I may like a stupid one. Besides, Lord Lambeth’s no

stupider than any one else.”

“No stupider than he gives you warning of,” her sister smiled.

“If I were in love with him as you said just now,” Bessie returned, “it

would be bad policy on your part to abuse him.”

“My dear child, don’t give me lessons in policy!” cried Mrs. Westgate.

“The policy I mean to follow is very deep.”

The girl began once more to walk about; then she stopped before her

companion. “I’ve never heard in the course of five minutes so many hints

and innuendoes. I wish you’d tell me in plain English what you mean.”

“I mean you may be much annoyed.”

“That’s still only a hint,” said Bessie.

Her sister just hesitated. “It will be said of you that you’ve come

after him—that you followed him.”

Bessie threw back her pretty head much as a startled hind, and a look

flashed into her face that made Mrs. Westgate get up. “Who says such

things as that?”

“People here.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“You’ve a very convenient faculty of doubt. But my policy will be, as I

say, very deep. I shall leave you to find out as many things as possible

for yourself.”

Bessie fixed her eyes on her sister, and Mrs. Westgate could have

believed there were tears in them. “Do they talk that way here?”

“You’ll see. I shall let you alone.”

“Don’t let me alone,” said Bessie Alden. “Take me away.”

“No; I want to see what you make of it,” her sister continued.

“I don’t understand.”

“You’ll understand after Lord Lambeth has come,” said Mrs. Westgate with

a persistence of private amusement.

The two ladies had arranged that on this afternoon Willie Woodley should

go with them to Hyde Park, where Bessie expected it would prove a rich

passage to have sat on a little green chair under the great trees and

beside Rotten Row. The want of a suitable escort had hitherto hampered

this adventure; but no escort, now, for such an expedition, could have

been more suitable than their devoted young countryman, whose mission in

life, it might almost be said, was to find chairs for ladies and who

appeared on the stroke of half-past five adorned with every superficial

grace that could qualify him for the scene.

“I’ve written to Lord Lambeth, my dear,” Mrs. Westgate mentioned on

coming into the room where Bessie, drawing on long grey gloves, had given

their visitor the impression that she was particularly attuned. Bessie

said nothing, but Willie Woodley exclaimed that his lordship was in town;

he had seen his name in the _Morning Post_. “Do you read the _Morning

Post_?” Mrs. Westgate thereupon asked.

“Oh yes; it’s great fun.” Mr. Woodley almost spoke as if the pleasure

were attended with physical risk.

“I want so to see it,” said Bessie, “there’s so much about it in

Thackeray.”

“I’ll send it to you every morning!” cried the young man with elation.

He found them what Bessie thought excellent places under the great trees

and beside the famous avenue the humours of which had been made familiar

to the girl’s childhood by the pictures in _Punch_. The day was bright

and warm and the crowd of riders and spectators, as well as the great

procession of carriages, proportionately dense and many-coloured. The

scene bore the stamp of the London social pressure at its highest, and it

made our young woman think of more things than she could easily express

to her companions. She sat silent, under her parasol, while her

imagination, according to its wont, kept pace with the deep strong tide

of the exhibition. Old impressions and preconceptions became living

things before the show, and she found herself, amid the crowd of images,

fitting a history to this person and a theory to that, and making a place

for them all in her small private museum of types. But if she said

little her sister on one side and Willie Woodley on the other delivered

themselves in lively alternation.

“Look at that green dress with blue flounces. Quelle toilette!” said

Mrs. Westgate.

“That’s the Marquis of Blackborough,” the young man was able to

contribute—“the one in the queer white coat. I heard him speak the other

night in the House of Lords; it was something about ramrods; he called

them _wamwods_. He’s an awful swell.”

“Did you ever see anything like the way they’re pinned back?” Mrs.

Westgate resumed. “They never know where to stop.”

“They do nothing but stop,” said Willie Woodley. “It prevents them from

walking. Here comes a great celebrity—Lady Beatrice Bellevue. She’s

awfully fast; see what little steps she takes.”

“Well, my dear,” Mrs. Westgate pursued to Bessie, “I hope you’re getting

some ideas for your couturière?”

“I’m getting plenty of ideas,” said Bessie, “but I don’t know that my

couturière would particularly appreciate them.”

Their companion presently perceived a mounted friend who drew up beside

the barrier of the Row and beckoned to him. He went forward and the

crowd of pedestrians closed about him, so that for some minutes he was

hidden from sight. At last he reappeared, bringing a gentleman with

him—a gentleman whom Bessie at first supposed to be his friend

dismounted. But at a second glance she found herself looking at Lord

Lambeth, who was shaking hands with her sister.

“I found him over there,” said Willie Woodley, “and I told him you were

here.”

And then Lord Lambeth, raising his hat afresh, shook hands with

Bessie—“Fancy your being here!” He was blushing and smiling; he looked

very handsome and he had a note of splendour he had not had in America.

The girl’s free fancy, as we know, was just then in marked exercise; so

that the tall young Englishman, as he stood there looking down at her,

had the benefit of it. “He’s handsomer and more splendid than anything

I’ve ever seen,” she said to herself. And then she remembered he was a

Marquis and she thought he somehow looked a Marquis.

“Really, you know,” he cried, “you ought to have let a fellow know you’ve

come!”

“I wrote to you an hour ago,” said Mrs. Westgate.

“Doesn’t all the world know it?” smiled Bessie.

“I assure you I didn’t know it!” he insisted. “Upon my honour I hadn’t

heard of it. Ask Woodley now; had I, Woodley?”

“Well, I think you’re rather a humbug,” this gentleman brought forth.

“You don’t believe that—do you, Miss Alden?” asked his lordship. “You

don’t believe I’m rather a humbug, eh?”

“No,” said Bessie after an instant, but choosing and conferring a grace

on the literal—“I don’t.”

“You’re too tall to stand up, Lord Lambeth,” Mrs. Westgate pronounced.

“You approach the normal only when you sit down. Be so good as to get a

chair.”

He found one and placed it sidewise, close to the two ladies. “If I

hadn’t met Woodley I should never have found you,” he went on. “Should

I, Woodley?”

“Well, I guess not,” said the young American.

“Not even with my letter?” asked Mrs. Westgate.

“Ah, well, I haven’t got your letter yet; I suppose I shall get it this

evening. It was awfully kind of you to write.”

“So I said to Bessie,” the elder lady observed.

“_Did_ she say so, Miss Alden?” Lord Lambeth a little pointlessly

inquired. “I daresay you’ve been here a month.”

“We’ve been here three,” mocked Mrs. Westgate.

“_Have_ you been here three months?” the young man asked again of Bessie.

“It seems a long time,” Bessie answered.

He had but a brief wonder—he found something. “I say, after that you had

better not call me a humbug! I’ve only been in town three weeks, but you

must have been hiding away. I haven’t seen you anywhere.”

“Where should you have seen us—where should we have gone?” Mrs. Westgate

fairly put to him.

It found Willie Woodley at least ready. “You should have gone to

Hurlingham.”

“No, let Lord Lambeth tell us,” Mrs. Westgate insisted.

“There are plenty of places to go to,” he said—“each one stupider than

the other. I mean people’s houses. They send you cards.”

“No one has sent us a scrap of a card,” Bessie laughed.

Mrs. Westgate attenuated. “We’re very quiet. We’re here as travellers.”

“We’ve been to Madame Tussaud’s,” Bessie further mentioned.

“Oh I say!” cried Lord Lambeth.

“We thought we should find your image there,” said Mrs. Westgate—“yours

and Mr. Beaumont’s.”

“In the Chamber of Horrors?” laughed the young man.

“It did duty very well for a party,” said Mrs. Westgate. “All the women

were _décolletées_, and many of the figures looked as if they could

almost speak.”

“Upon my word,” his lordship returned, “you see people at London parties

who look a long way from that!”

“Do you think Mr. Woodley could find us Mr. Beaumont?” asked the elder of

the ladies.

He stared and looked about. “I daresay he could. Percy sometimes comes

here. Don’t you think you could find him, Woodley? Make a dive or a

dash for it.”

“Thank you; I’ve had enough of violent movement,” said Willie Woodley.

“I’ll wait till Mr. Beaumont comes to the surface.”

“I’ll bring him to see you,” said Lord Lambeth. “Where are you staying?”

“You’ll find the address in my letter—Jones’s Hotel.”

“Oh, one of those places just out of Piccadilly? Beastly hole, isn’t

it?” Lord Lambeth inquired.

“I believe it’s the best hotel in London,” said Mrs. Westgate.

“But they give you awful rubbish to eat, don’t they?” his lordship went

on.

Mrs. Westgate practised the same serenity. “Awful.”

“I always feel so sorry for people who come up to town and go to live in

those dens,” continued the young man. “They eat nothing but filth.”

“Oh I say!” cried Willie Woodley.

“Well, and how do you like London, Miss Alden?” Lord Lambeth asked,

unperturbed by this ejaculation.

The girl was prompt. “I think it grand.”

“My sister likes it, in spite of the ‘filth’!” Mrs. Westgate recorded.

“I hope then you’re going to stop a long time.”

“As long as I can,” Bessie replied.

“And where’s wonderful Mr. Westgate?” asked Lord Lambeth of this

gentleman’s wife.

“He’s where he always is—in that tiresome New York.”

“He must have staying power,” said the young man.

She appeared to consider. “Well, he stays ahead of every one else.”

Lord Lambeth sat nearly an hour with his American friends; but it is not

our purpose to relate their conversation in full. He addressed a great

many remarks to the younger lady and finally turned toward her

altogether, while Willie Woodley wasted a certain amount of effort to

regale Mrs. Westgate. Bessie herself was sparing of effusion; she

thought, on her guard, of what her sister had said to her at luncheon.

Little by little, however, she interested herself again in her English

friend very much as she had done at Newport; only it seemed to her he

might here become more interesting. He would be an unconscious part of

the antiquity, the impressiveness, the picturesqueness of England; of all

of which things poor Bessie Alden, like most familiars of the

overciphered _tabula rasa_, was terribly at the mercy.

“I’ve often wished I were back at Newport,” the young man candidly

stated. “Those days I spent at your sister’s were awfully jolly.”

“We enjoyed them very much; I hope your father’s better.”

“Oh dear yes. When I got to England the old humbug was out

grouse-shooting. It was what you call in America a gigantic fraud. My

mother had got nervous. My three weeks at Newport seemed a happy dream.”

“America certainly is very different from England,” said Bessie.

“I hope you like England better, eh?” he returned almost persuasively.

“No Englishman can ask that seriously of a person of another country.”

He turned his cheerful brown eyes on her. “You mean it’s a matter of

course?”

“If I were English,” said Bessie, “it would certainly seem to me a matter

of course that every one should be a good patriot.”

“Oh dear, yes; patriotism’s everything.” He appeared not quite to

follow, but was clearly contented. “Now what are you going to do here?”

“On Thursday I’m going to the Tower.”

“The Tower?”

“The Tower of London. Did you never hear of it?”

“Oh yes, I’ve been there,” said Lord Lambeth. “I was taken there by my

governess when I was six years old. It’s a rum idea your going there.”

“Do give me a few more rum ideas then. I want to see everything of that

sort. I’m going to Hampton Court and to Windsor and to the Dulwich

Gallery.”

He seemed greatly amused. “I wonder you don’t go to Rosherville

Gardens.”

Bessie yearned. “Are they interesting?”

“Oh wonderful!”

“Are they weirdly old? That’s all I care for,” she said.

“They’re tremendously old; they’re all falling to ruins.”

The girl rose to it. “I think there’s nothing so charming as an old

ruinous garden. We must certainly go there.”

Her friend broke out into mirth. “I say, Woodley, here’s Miss Alden

wants to go down to Rosherville Gardens! Hang it, they _are_ ‘weird’!”

Willie Woodley looked a little blank; he was caught in the fact of

ignorance of an apparently conspicuous feature of London life. But in a

moment he turned it off. “Very well,” he said, “I’ll write for a

permit.”

Lord Lambeth’s exhilaration increased. “‘Gad, I believe that, to get

your money’s worth over here, you Americans would go anywhere!”

“We wish to go to Parliament,” said Bessie. “That’s one of the first

things.”

“Ah, it would bore you to death!” he returned.

“We wish to hear you speak.”

“I never speak—except to young ladies.”

She looked at him from under the shade of her parasol. “You’re very

strange,” she then quietly concluded. “I don’t think I approve of you.”

“Ah, now don’t be severe, Miss Alden!” he cried with the note of

sincerity. “Please don’t be severe. I want you to like me—awfully.”

“To like you awfully? You mustn’t laugh at me then when I make mistakes.

I regard it as my right—as a free-born American—to make as many mistakes

as I choose.”

“Upon my word I didn’t laugh at you,” the young man pleaded.

“And not only that,” Bessie went on; “but I hold that all my mistakes

should be set down to my credit. You must think the better of me for

them.”

“I can’t think better of you than I do,” he declared.

Again, shadily, she took him in. “You certainly speak very well to young

ladies. But why don’t you address the House?—isn’t that what they call

it?”

“Because I’ve nothing to say.”

“Haven’t you a great position?” she demanded.

He looked a moment at the back of his glove. “I’ll set that down as one

of your mistakes—to your credit.” And as if he disliked talking about

his position he changed the subject. “I wish you’d let me go with you to

the Tower and to Hampton Court and to all those other places.”

“We shall be most happy,” said Bessie.

“And of course I shall be delighted to show you the Houses of

Parliament—some day that suits you. There are a lot of things I want to

do for you. I want you to have a good time. And I should like very much

to present some of my friends to you if it wouldn’t bore you. Then it

would be awfully kind of you to come down to Branches.”

“We’re much obliged to you, Lord Lambeth,” said Bessie. “And what may

Branches be?”

“It’s a house in the country. I think you might like it.”

Willie Woodley and Mrs. Westgate were at this moment sitting in silence,

and the young man’s ear caught these last words of the other pair. “He’s

inviting Miss Bessie to one of his castles,” he murmured to his

companion.

Mrs. Westgate hereupon, foreseeing what she mentally called

“complications,” immediately got up; and the two ladies, taking leave of

their English friend, returned, under conduct of their American, to

Jones’s Hotel.

V

Lord Lambeth came to see them on the morrow, bringing Percy Beaumont with

him—the latter having at once declared his intention of neglecting none

of the usual offices of civility. This declaration, however, on his

kinsman’s informing him of the advent of the two ladies, had been

preceded by another exchange.

“Here they are then and you’re in for it.”

“And what am I in for?” the younger man had inquired.

“I’ll let your mother give it a name. With all respect to whom,” Percy

had added, “I must decline on this occasion to do any more police duty.

The Duchess must look after you herself.”

“I’ll give her a chance,” the Duchess’s son had returned a trifle grimly.

“I shall make her go and see them.”

“She won’t do it, my boy.”

“We’ll see if she doesn’t,” said Lord Lambeth.

But if Mr. Beaumont took a subtle view of the arrival of the fair

strangers at Jones’s Hotel he was sufficiently capable of a still deeper

refinement to offer them a smiling countenance. He fell into animated

conversation—conversation animated at least on _her_ side—with Mrs.

Westgate, while his companion appealed more confusedly to the younger

lady. Mrs. Westgate began confessing and protesting, declaring and

discriminating.

“I must say London’s a great deal brighter and prettier just now than it

was when I was here last—in the month of November. There’s evidently a

great deal going on, and you seem to have a good many flowers. I’ve no

doubt it’s very charming for all you people and that you amuse yourselves

immensely. It’s very good of you to let Bessie and me come and sit and

look at you. I suppose you’ll think I’m very satirical, but I must

confess that that’s the feeling I have in London.”

“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand to what feeling you allude,” said

Percy Beaumont.

“The feeling that it’s all very well for you English people.

Everything’s beautifully arranged for you.”

“It seems to me it’s very well arranged here for some Americans

sometimes,” Percy plucked up spirit to answer.

“For some of them, yes—if they like to be patronised. But I must say I

don’t like to be patronised. I may be very eccentric and undisciplined

and unreasonable, but I confess I never was fond of patronage. I like to

associate with people on the same terms as I do in my own country; that’s

a peculiar taste that I have. But here people seem to expect something

else—really I can’t make out quite what. I’m afraid you’ll think I’m

very ungrateful, for I certainly have received in one way and another a

great deal of attention. The last time I was here a lady sent me a

message that I was at liberty to come and pay her my respects.”

“Dear me, I hope you didn’t go,” Mr. Beaumont cried.

“You’re deliciously naïf, I must say that for you!” Mrs. Westgate

promptly pursued. “It must be a great advantage to you here in London.

I suppose that if I myself had a little more naïveté—of your blessed

national lack of any approach to a sense for shades—I should enjoy it

more. I should be content to sit on a chair in the Park and see the

people pass, to be told that this is the Duchess of Suffolk and that the

Lord Chamberlain, and that I must be thankful for the privilege of

beholding them. I daresay it’s very peevish and critical of me to ask

for anything else. But I was always critical—it’s the joy of my life—and

I freely confess to the sin of being fastidious. I’m told there’s some

remarkably superior second-rate society provided here for strangers.

_Merci_! I don’t want any superior second-rate society. I want the

society I’ve been accustomed to.”

Percy mustered a rueful gaiety. “I hope you don’t call Lambeth and me

second-rate!”

“Oh I’m accustomed to you!” said Mrs. Westgate. “Do you know you English

sometimes make the most wonderful speeches? The first time I came to

London I went out to dine—as I told you, I’ve received a great deal of

attention. After dinner, in the drawing-room, I had some conversation

with an old lady—no, you mustn’t look that way: I assure you I had! I

forget what we talked about, but she presently said, in allusion to

something we were discussing: ‘Oh, you know, the aristocracy do

so-and-so, but in one’s own class of life it’s very different.’ In one’s

own class of life! What’s a poor unprotected American woman to do in a

country where she is liable to have that sort of thing said to her?”

“I should say she’s not to mind, not a rap—though you seem to get hold of

some very queer old ladies. I compliment you on your acquaintance!”

Percy pursued. “If you’re trying to bring me to admit that London’s an

odious place you’ll not succeed. I’m extremely fond of it and think it

the jolliest place in the world.”

“Pour vous autres—I never said the contrary,” Mrs. Westgate retorted—an

expression made use of, this last, because both interlocutors had begun

to raise their voices. Mr. Beaumont naturally didn’t like to hear the

seat of his existence abused, and Mrs. Westgate, no less naturally,

didn’t like a stubborn debater.

“Hallo!” said Lord Lambeth; “what are they up to now?” And he came away

from the window, where he had been standing with Bessie.

“I quite agree with a very clever countrywoman of mine,” the elder lady

continued with charming ardour even if with imperfect relevancy. She

smiled at the two gentlemen for a moment with terrible brightness, as if

to toss at their feet—upon their native heath—the gauntlet of defiance.

“For me there are only two social positions worth speaking of—that of an

American lady and that of the Emperor of Russia.”

“And what do you do with the American gentlemen?” asked Lord Lambeth.

“She leaves them in America!” said his comrade.

On the departure of their visitors Bessie mentioned that Lord Lambeth

would come the next day, to go with them to the Tower, and that he had

kindly offered to bring his “trap” and drive them all through the city.

Mrs. Westgate listened in silence to this news and for some time

afterwards also said nothing. But at last, “If you hadn’t requested me

the other day not to speak of it,” she began, “there’s something I’d make

bold to ask you.” Bessie frowned a little; her dark blue eyes grew more

dark than blue. But her sister went on. “As it is I’ll take the risk.

You’re not in love with Lord Lambeth: I believe it perfectly. Very good.

But is there by chance any danger of your becoming so? It’s a very

simple question—don’t take offence. I’ve a particular reason,” said Mrs.

Westgate, “for wanting to know.”

Bessie for some moments said nothing; she only looked displeased. “No;

there’s no danger,” she at last answered with a certain dryness.

“Then I should like to frighten them!” cried her sister, clasping

jewelled hands.

“To frighten whom?”

“All these people. Lord Lambeth’s family and friends.”

The girl wondered. “How should you frighten them?”

“It wouldn’t be I—it would be you. It would frighten them to suppose you

holding in thrall his lordship’s young affections.”

Our young lady, her clear eyes still overshadowed by her dark brows,

continued to examine it. “Why should that frighten them?”

Mrs. Westgate winged her shaft with a smile before launching it.

“Because they think you’re not good enough. You’re a charming girl,

beautiful and amiable, intelligent and clever, and as _bien-élevée_ as it

is possible to be; but you’re not a fit match for Lord Lambeth.”

Bessie showed again a coldness. “Where do you get such extraordinary

ideas? You’ve said some such odd things lately. My dear Kitty, where do

you collect them?”

But Kitty, unabashed, held to her idea. “Yes, it would put them on pins

and needles, and it wouldn’t hurt you. Mr. Beaumont’s already most

uneasy. I could soon see that.”

The girl turned it over. “Do you mean they spy on him, that they

interfere with him?”

“I don’t know what power they have to interfere, but I know that a

British _materfamilias_—and when she’s a Duchess into the bargain—is

often a force to be reckoned with.”

It has already been intimated that before certain appearances of strange

or sinister cast our young woman was apt to shy off into scepticism. She

abstained on the present occasion from expressing disbelief, for she

wished not to irritate her sister. But she said to herself that Kitty

had been misinformed—that this was a traveller’s tale. Though she was a

girl of quick imagination there could in the nature of things be no truth

for her in the attribution to her of a vulgar identity. Only the form

she gave her doubt was: “I must say that in that case I’m very sorry for

Lord Lambeth.”

Mrs. Westgate, more and more exhilarated by her own scheme, irradiated

interest. “If I could only believe it was safe! But when you begin to

pity him I, on my side, am afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Of your pitying him too much.”

Bessie turned impatiently off—then at the end of a minute faced about.

“What if I _should_ pity him too much?”

Mrs. Westgate hereupon averted herself, but after a moment’s reflexion

met the case. “It would come, after all, to the same thing.”

Lord Lambeth came the next day with his trap, when the two ladies,

attended by Willie Woodley, placed themselves under his guidance and were

conveyed eastward, through some of the most fascinating, as Bessie called

them, even though the duskiest districts, to the great turreted donjon

that overlooks the London shipping. They alighted together to enter the

famous fortress, where they secured the services of a venerable

beef-eater, who, ignoring the presence of other dependants on his

leisure, made a fine exclusive party of them and marched them through

courts and corridors, through armouries and prisons. He delivered his

usual peripatetic discourse, and they stopped and stared and peeped and

stooped according as he marshalled and directed them. Bessie appealed to

this worthy—even on more heads than he seemed aware of; she overtaxed, in

her earnestness, his learnt lesson and found the place, as she more than

once mentioned to him, quite delirious. Lord Lambeth was in high

good-humour; his delirium at least was gay and he betrayed afresh that

aptitude for the simpler forms of ironic comment that the girl had noted

in him. Willie Woodley kept looking at the ceilings and tapping the

walls with the knuckle of a pearl-grey glove; and Mrs. Westgate, asking

at frequent intervals to be allowed to sit down and wait till they came

back, was as frequently informed that they would never do anything so

weak. When it befell that Bessie’s glowing appeals, chiefly on

collateral points of English history, but left the warder gaping she

resorted straight to Lord Lambeth. His lordship then pleaded gross

incompetence, declaring he knew nothing about that sort of thing and

greatly diverted, to all appearance, at being treated as an authority.

“You can’t honestly expect people to know as awfully much as you,” he

said.

“I should expect you to know a great deal more,” Bessie Alden returned.

“Well, women always know more than men about names and dates and

historical characters,” he said. “There was Lady Jane Grey we’ve just

been hearing about, who went in for Latin and Greek and all the learning

of her age.”

“_You_ have no right to be ignorant at all events,” Bessie argued with

all her freedom.

“Why haven’t I as good a right as any one else?”

“Because you’ve lived in the midst of all these things.”

“What things do you mean? Axes and blocks and thumbscrews?”

“All these historical things. You belong to an historical family.”

“Bessie really harks back too much to the dead past—she makes too much of

it,” Mrs. Westgate opined, catching the sense of this colloquy.

“Yes, you hark back,” the young man laughed, thankful for a formula.

“You do make too much of the dead past.”

He went with the ladies a couple of days later to Hampton Court, Willie

Woodley being also of the party. The afternoon was charming, the famous

horse-chestnuts blossomed to admiration, and Lord Lambeth, who found in

Miss Alden the improving governess, he declared, of his later immaturity,

as Mademoiselle Boquet, dragging him by the hand to view all lions, had

been that of his earliest, pronounced the old red palace not half so

beastly as he had supposed. Bessie herself rose to raptures; she went

about murmuring and “raving.” “It’s too lovely; it’s too enchanting;

it’s too exactly what it ought to be!”

At Hampton Court the tinkling flocks are not provided with an official

bellwether, but are left to browse at discretion on the tough herbage of

History. It happened in this manner that, in default of another

informant, our young woman, who on doubtful questions was able to suggest

a great many alternatives, found herself again apply for judicious

support to Lord Lambeth. He, however, could but once more declare

himself a broken reed and that his education, in such matters, had been

sadly neglected.

“And I’m sorry it makes you so wretched,” he further professed.

“You’re so disappointing, you know,” she returned; but more in pity—pity

for herself—than in anger.

“Ah, now, don’t say that! That’s the worst thing you could possibly

say.”

“No”—she spoke with a sad lucidity—“it’s not so bad as to say that I had

expected nothing of you.”

“I don’t know”—and he seemed to rejoice in a chance to demur. “Give me a

notion of the sort of thing you expected.”

“Well, that you’d be more what I should like to be—what I should try to

be—in your place.”

“Ah, my place!” he groaned. “You’re always talking about my place.”

The girl gave him a look; he might have thought she coloured; and for a

little she made no rejoinder. “Does it strike you that I’m always

talking about your place?”

“I’m sure you do it a great honour,” he said as if fearing he had sounded

uncivil.

“I’ve often thought about it,” she went on after a moment. “I’ve often

thought of your future as an hereditary legislator. An hereditary

legislator ought to know so many things, oughtn’t he?”

“Not if he doesn’t legislate.”

“But you _will_ legislate one of these days—you may have to at any time;

it’s absurd your saying you won’t. You’re very much looked up to

here—I’m assured of that.”

“I don’t know that I ever noticed it.”

“It’s because you’re used to it then. You ought to fill the place.”

“How do you mean, fill it?” asked Lord Lambeth.

“You ought to be very clever and brilliant—to be ‘up’ in almost

everything.”

He turned on her his handsome young face of profane wonder. “Shall I

tell you something? A young man in my position, as you call it—”

“I didn’t invent the term,” she interposed. “I’ve seen it in a great

many books.”

“Hang it, you’re always at your books! A fellow in my position then does

well enough at the worst—he muddles along whatever he does. That’s about

what I mean to say.”

“Well, if your own people are content with you,” Bessie laughed, “it’s

not for me to complain. But I shall always think that properly you

should have a great mind—a great character.”

“Ah, that’s very theoretic!” the young man promptly brought out. “Depend

upon it, that’s a Yankee prejudice.”

“Happy the country then,” she as eagerly declared, “where people’s

prejudices make so for light.”

He stopped short, with his slightly strained gaiety, as for the

pleasantness of high argument. “What it comes to then is that we’re all

here a pack of fools and me the biggest of the lot?”

“I said nothing so rude of a great people—and a great person. But I must

repeat that you personally are—in your representative capacity that’s to

be—disappointing.”

“My dear Miss Alden,” he simply cried at this, “I’m the best fellow in

the world!”

“Ah, if it were not for that!” she beautifully smiled.

Mrs. Westgate had many more friends in London than she pretended, and

before long had renewed acquaintance with most of them. Their

hospitality was prompt, so that, one thing leading to another, she began,

as the phrase is, to go out. Bessie Alden, in this way, saw a good deal

of what she took great pleasure in calling to herself English society.

She went to balls and danced, she went to dinners and talked, she went to

concerts and listened—at concerts Bessie always listened—she went to

exhibitions and wondered. Her enjoyment was keen and her curiosity

insatiable, and, grateful in general for all her opportunities, she

especially prized the privilege of meeting certain celebrated persons,

authors and artists, philosophers and statesmen, of whose renown she had

been a humble and distant beholder and who now, as part of the frequent

furniture of London drawing-rooms, struck her as stars fallen from the

firmament and become palpable—revealing also sometimes on contact

qualities not to have been predicted of bodies sidereal. Bessie, who

knew so many of her contemporaries by reputation, lost in this way

certain fond illusions; but on the other hand she had innumerable

satisfactions and enthusiasms, and she laid bare the wealth of her

emotions to a dear friend of her own sex in Boston, with whom she was in

voluminous correspondence. Some of her sentiments indeed she sought

mildly to flash upon Lord Lambeth, who came almost every day to Jones’s

Hotel and whom Mrs. Westgate admitted to be really devoted. Captain

Littledale, it appeared, had gone to India; and of several others of this

lady’s ex-pensioners—gentlemen who, as she said, had made, in New York, a

club-house of her drawing-room—no tidings were to be obtained; but this

particular friend of other days was certainly attentive enough to make up

for the accidental absences, the short memories, the remarked lapses, of

every one else. He drove the sisters in the Park, took them to visit

private collections of pictures and, having a house of his own, invited

them to luncheon, to tea, to dinner, to supper even after the arduous

German opera. Mrs. Westgate, following the fashion of many of her

countrywomen, caused herself and her companion to be presented at the

English Court by her diplomatic representative—for it was in this manner

that she alluded to the American Minister to England, inquiring what on

earth he was put there for if not to make the proper arrangements for her

reception at Court.

Lord Lambeth expressed a hatred of Courts, but he had social privileges

or exercised some court function—these undiscriminated attributes, dim

backgrounds where old gold seemed to shine through transparent

conventions, were romantically rich to our young heroine—that involved

his support of his sovereign on the day on which the two ladies at

Jones’s Hotel repaired to Buckingham Palace in a remarkable coach sent by

his lordship to fetch them. He appeared in a gorgeous uniform, and

Bessie Alden was particularly struck with his glory—especially when on

her asking him, rather foolishly as she felt, if he were a loyal subject,

he replied that he was a loyal subject to herself. This pronouncement

was emphasised by his dancing with her at a royal ball to which the two

ladies afterwards went, and was not impaired by the fact that she thought

he danced very ill. He struck her as wonderfully kind; she asked herself

with growing vivacity why he should be so kind. It was just his

character—that seemed the natural reply. She had told her relative how

much she liked him, and now that she liked him more she wondered at her

excess. She liked him for his clear nature; to this question as well

that seemed the natural answer. The truth was that when once the

impressions of London life began to crowd thickly upon her she completely

forgot her subtle sister’s warning on the cynicism of public opinion. It

had given her great pain at the moment; but there was no particular

reason why she should remember it: it corresponded too little with any

sensible reality. Besides which there was her habit, her beautiful

system, of consenting to know nothing of human baseness or of the vulgar

side. There were things, just as there were people, that were as nought

from the moment one ignored them. She was accordingly not haunted with

the sense of a low imputation. She wasn’t in love with Lord Lambeth—she

assured herself of that. It will immediately be observed that when such

assurances become necessary the state of a young lady’s affections is

already ambiguous; and indeed the girl made no attempt to dissimulate (to

her finer intelligence) that “appeal of type”—she had a ready name for

it—to which her gallant hovering gentleman caused her wonderingly to

respond. She was fully aware that she liked it, this so unalloyed image

of the simple candid manly healthy English temperament. She spoke to

herself of it as if she liked the man for it instead of her liking it for

the man. She cherished the thought of his bravery, which she had never

in the least seen tested, enjoyed a fond view in him of the free and

instinctive range of the “gentlemanly” character, and was as familiar

with his good looks as if she habitually handed him out his neckties.

She was perfectly conscious, moreover, of privately dilating on his more

adventitious merits—of the effect on her imagination of the large

opportunities of so splendid a person; opportunities she hardly knew for

what, but, as she supposed, for doing great things, for setting an

example, for exerting an influence, for conferring happiness, for

encouraging the arts. She had an ideal of conduct for a young man who

should find himself in this grand position, and she tried to adapt it to

her friend’s behaviour as you might attempt to fit a silhouette in cut

paper over a shadow projected on a wall. Bessie Alden’s silhouette,

however, refused to coincide at all points with his lordship’s figure; a

want of harmony that she sometimes deplored beyond discretion. It was

his own affair she at moments told herself—it wasn’t _her_ concern the

least in the world. When he was absent it was of course less

striking—then he might have seemed sufficiently to unite high

responsibilities with high braveries. But when he sat there within

sight, laughing and talking with his usual effect of natural salubrity

and mental mediocrity, she took the measure of his shortcoming and felt

acutely that if his position was, so to speak, heroic, there was little

of that large line in the young man himself. Then her imagination

wandered away from him—very far away; for it was an incontestable fact

that at these moments he lagged ever so much behind it. He affected her

as on occasion, dreadful to say, almost _actively_ stupid. It may have

been that while she so curiously inquired and so critically brooded _her_

personal wit, her presence of mind, made no great show—though it is also

possible that she sometimes positively charmed, or at least interested,

her friend by this very betrayal of the frequent, the distant and

unreported, excursion. So it would have hung together that a part of her

unconscious appeal to him from the first had been in his feeling her

judge and appraise him more freely and irresponsibly—more at her ease and

her leisure, as it were—than several young ladies with whom he had passed

for adventurously intimate. To be convinced of her “cleverness” and yet

also to be aware of her appreciation—when the cleverness might have been

after all but dangerous and complicating—all made, to Lord Lambeth’s

sense, for convenience and cheer. Hadn’t he compassed the satisfaction,

that high aim of young men greatly placed and greatly moneyed, of being

liked for himself? It was true a cynical counsellor might have whispered

to him: “Liked for yourself? Ah, not so very awfully _much_!” He had at

any rate the constant hope of adding to that quantity.

It may not seem to fit in—but the truth was strange—that Bessie Alden,

when he struck her as “deficient,” found herself aspiring by that very

reason to some finer way of liking him. This was fairly indeed on

grounds of conscience—because she felt he had been thoroughly “nice” to

her sister and so deemed it no more than fair that she should think as

well of him as he thought of her. The effort in question was possibly

sometimes not so successful as it might have been, the result being at

moments an irritation, which, though consciously vague, was yet, with

inconsequence, acute enough to express itself in hostile criticism of

several British institutions. Bessie went to entertainments at which she

met Lord Lambeth, but also to others at which he was neither actually nor

imaginably present; and it was chiefly at these latter that she

encountered those literary and artistic celebrities of whom mention has

been made. After a while she reduced the matter to a principle. If he

should appear anywhere she might take it for a flat sign that there would

be neither poets nor philosophers; and as a result—for it was almost a

direct result—she used to enumerate to the young man these objects of her

admiration.

“You seem to be awfully fond of that sort of people,” he said one day as

if the idea had just occurred to him.

“They’re the people in England I’m most curious to see,” she promptly

replied.

“I suppose that’s because you’ve read so much,” Lord Lambeth gallantly

threw off.

“I’ve _not_ read so much. It’s because we think so much of them at

home.”

“Oh I see! In your so awfully clever Boston.”

“Not only in our awfully clever Boston, but in our just commonly clever

everywhere. We hold them in great honour,” said Bessie. “It’s they who

go to the best dinner-parties.”

“I daresay you’re right. I can’t say I know many of them.”

“It’s a pity you don’t,” she returned. “It would do you some good.”

“I daresay it would,” said the young man very humbly. “But I must say I

don’t like the looks of some of them.”

“Neither do I—of some of them. But there are all kinds, and many of them

are charming.”

“I’ve talked with two or three of them,” Lord Lambeth went on, “and I

thought they had a kind of fawning manner.”

“Why should they fawn?” Bessie demanded.

“I’m sure I don’t know. Why indeed?”

“Perhaps you only thought so,” she suggested.

“Well, of course,” her companion allowed, “that’s a kind of thing that

can’t be proved.”

“In America they don’t fawn,” she went on.

“Don’t they? Ah, well, then they must be better company.”

She had a pause. “That’s one of the few things I don’t like about

England—your keeping the distinguished people apart.”

“How do you mean, apart?”

“Why, letting them come only to certain places. You never see them.”

All his pleasant face wondered—he seemed to take it as another of her

rather stiff riddles. “What people do you mean?”

“The eminent people; the authors and artists; the clever people.”

“Oh there are other eminent people besides those!” said Lord Lambeth.

“Well, you certainly keep them apart,” Bessie earnestly contended.

“And there are plenty of other clever people.”

It was spoken with a fine simple faith, yet the tone of it made her

laugh. “‘Plenty’? How many?”

On another occasion—just after a dinner-party—she mentioned something

else in England she didn’t like.

“Oh I say!” he cried; “haven’t you abused us enough?”

“I’ve never abused you at all,” said Bessie; “but I don’t like your

‘precedence.’”

She was to feel relieved at his not taking it solemnly. “It isn’t _my_

precedence!”

“Yes, it’s yours—just exactly yours; and I think it’s odious,” she

insisted.

“I never saw such a young lady for discussing things! Has some one had

the impudence to go before you?” Lord Lambeth asked.

“It’s not the going before me I object to,” said Bessie; “it’s their

pretending they’ve a right to do it—a right I should grovellingly

recognise.”

“I never saw such a person, either, for not ‘recognising,’ let alone for

not ‘grovelling.’ Every one here has to grovel to somebody or to

something—and no doubt it’s all beastly. But one takes the thick with

the thin, and it saves a lot of trouble.”

“It _makes_ a lot of trouble, by which I mean a lot of ugliness. It’s

horrid!” Bessie maintained.

“But how would you have the first people go?” the young man asked. “They

can’t go last, you know.”

“Whom do you mean by the first people?”

“Ah, if you mean to question first principles!” said Lord Lambeth.

“If those are your first principles no wonder some of your arrangements

are horrid!” she cried, with a charming but not wholly sincere ferocity.

“I’m a silly chit, no doubt, so of course I go last; but imagine what

Kitty must feel on being informed that she’s not at liberty to budge till

certain other ladies have passed out!”

“Oh I say, she’s not ‘informed’!” he protested. “No one would do such a

thing as that.”

“She’s made to feel it—as if they were afraid she’d make a rush for the

door. No, you’ve a lovely country”—she clung as for consistency to her

discrimination—“but your precedence is horrid.”

“I certainly shouldn’t think your sister would like it,” Lord Lambeth

said, with even exaggerated gravity. But she couldn’t induce him—amused

as he almost always was at the effect of giving her, as he called it, her

head—to join her in more formal reprobation of this repulsive custom,

which he spoke of as a convenience she would destroy without offering a

better in its place.