Percy Beaumont had all this time been a very much less frequent visitor at Jones’s Hotel than his former fellow traveller; he had in fact called but twice on the two American ladies. Lord Lambeth, who often saw him, reproached him with his neglect and declared that though Mrs. Westgate had said nothing about it he made no doubt she was secretly wounded by it. “She suffers too much to speak,” said his comrade.

“That’s all gammon,” Percy returned; “there’s a limit to what people can suffer!” And though sending no apologies to Jones’s Hotel he undertook in a manner to explain his absence. “You’re always there yourself, confound you, and that’s reason enough for my not going.”

“I don’t see why. There’s enough for both of us.”

“Well, I don’t care to be a witness of your reckless passion,” said Percy Beaumont.

His friend turned on him a cold eye and for a moment said nothing, presently, however, speaking a little stiffly. “My passion doesn’t make such a show as you might suppose, considering what a demonstrative beggar I am.”

“I don’t want to know anything about it — anything whatever,” said Beaumont. “Your mother asks me every time she sees me whether I believe you’re really lost — and Lady Pimlico does the same. I prefer to be able to answer that I’m in complete ignorance, that I never go there. I stay away for consistency’s sake. As I said the other day, they must look after you themselves.”

“Well, you’re wonderfully considerate,” the young man returned. “They never question me.”

“They’re afraid of you. They’re afraid of annoying you and making you worse. So they go to work very cautiously, and, somewhere or other, they get their information. They know a great deal about you. They know you’ve been with those ladies to the dome of Saint Paul’s and — where was the other place? — to the Thames Tunnel.”

“If all their knowledge is as accurate as that it must be very valuable,” said Lord Lambeth.

“Well, at any rate, they know you’ve been visiting the ‘sights of the metropolis.’ They think — very naturally, as it seems to me — that when you take to visiting the sights of the metropolis with a little nobody of an American girl something may be supposed to be ‘up.’” The young man met this remark with scornful laughter, but his companion continued after a pause: “I told you just now that I cultivate my ignorance, but I find I can no longer stand my suspense. I confess I do want to know whether you propose to marry Miss Alden.”

On this point Lord Lambeth gave his questioner no prompt satisfaction; he only mused — frowningly, portentously. “By Jove they go rather too far. They shall have cause to worry — I promise them.”