Chapter 4

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.