The young girl looked at her companion, observing him attentively, but covertly, as women, even when very young, know how to do.
Lord Lambeth repaid observation; tall, straight, and strong, he was handsome as certain young Englishmen, and certain young Englishmen almost alone, are handsome; with a perfect finish of feature and a look of intellectual repose and gentle good temper which seemed somehow to be consequent upon his well-cut nose and chin.
And to speak of Lord Lambeth's expression of intellectual repose is not simply a civil way of saying that he looked stupid.
He was evidently not a young man of an irritable imagination;he was not, as he would himself have said, tremendously clever;but though there was a kind of appealing dullness in his eye, he looked thoroughly reasonable and competent, and his appearance proclaimed that to be a nobleman, an athlete, and an excellent fellow was a sufficiently brilliant combination of qualities.
The young girl beside him, it may be attested without further delay, thought him the handsomest young man she had ever seen;and Bessie Alden's imagination, unlike that of her companion, was irritable. He, however, was also making up his mind that she was uncommonly pretty.
"I daresay it's very gay here, that you have lots of balls and parties,"he said; for, if he was not tremendously clever, he rather prided himself on having, with women, a sufficiency of conversation.
"Oh, yes, there is a great deal going on," Bessie Alden replied.
"There are not so many balls, but there are a good many other things.
You will see for yourself; we live rather in the midst of it.""It's very kind of you to say that. But I thought you Americans were always dancing.""I suppose we dance a good deal; but I have never seen much of it.
We don't do it much, at any rate, in summer. And I am sure,"said Bessie Alden, "that we don't have so many balls as you have in England.""Really!" exclaimed Lord Lambeth. "Ah, in England it all depends, you know.""You will not think much of our gaieties," said the young girl, looking at him with a little mixture of interrogation and decision which was peculiar to her. The interrogation seemed earnest and the decision seemed arch; but the mixture, at any rate, was charming.
"Those things, with us, are much less splendid than in England.""I fancy you don't mean that," said Lord Lambeth, laughing.
"I assure you I mean everything I say," the young girl declared.
"Certainly, from what I have read about English society, it is very different.""Ah well, you know," said her companion, "those things are often described by fellows who know nothing about them.
You mustn't mind what you read."
"Oh, I SHALL mind what I read!" Bessie Alden rejoined.
"When I read Thackeray and George Eliot, how can I help minding them?""Ah well, Thackeray, and George Eliot," said the young nobleman;"I haven't read much of them."
"Don't you suppose they know about society?" asked Bessie Alden.
"Oh, I daresay they know; they were so very clever.
But these fashionable novels," said Lord Lambeth, "they are awful rot, you know."His companion looked at him a moment with her dark blue eyes, and then she looked down in the chasm where the water was tumbling about.
"Do you mean Mrs. Gore, for instance?" she said presently, raising her eyes.
"I am afraid I haven't read that, either," was the young man's rejoinder, laughing a little and blushing.
"I am afraid you'll think I am not very intellectual.""Reading Mrs. Gore is no proof of intellect. But I like reading everything about English life--even poor books.
I am so curious about it."
"Aren't ladies always curious?" asked the young man jestingly.
But Bessie Alden appeared to desire to answer his question seriously.
"I don't think so--I don't think we are enough so--that we care about many things. So it's all the more of a compliment," she added, "that I should want to know so much about England."The logic here seemed a little close; but Lord Lambeth, made conscious of a compliment, found his natural modesty just at hand.
"I am sure you know a great deal more than I do.""I really think I know a great deal--for a person who has never been there.""Have you really never been there?" cried Lord Lambeth. "Fancy!""Never--except in imagination," said the young girl.
"Fancy!" repeated her companion. "But I daresay you'll go soon, won't you?""It's the dream of my life!" declared Bessie Alden, smiling.
"But your sister seems to know a tremendous lot about London,"Lord Lambeth went on.
The young girl was silent a moment. "My sister and I are two very different persons," she presently said. "She has been a great deal in Europe. She has been in England several times.
She has known a great many English people.""But you must have known some, too," said Lord Lambeth.
"I don't think that I have ever spoken to one before.
You are the first Englishman that--to my knowledge--I have ever talked with."
Bessie Alden made this statement with a certain gravity--almost, as it seemed to Lord Lambeth, an impressiveness.
Attempts at impressiveness always made him feel awkward, and he now began to laugh and swing his stick. "Ah, you would have been sure to know!" he said. And then he added, after an instant, "I'm sorry I am not a better specimen."The young girl looked away; but she smiled, laying aside her impressiveness.
"You must remember that you are only a beginning," she said.
Then she retraced her steps, leading the way back to the lawn, where they saw Mrs. Westgate come toward them with Percy Beaumont still at her side.
"Perhaps I shall go to England next year," Miss Alden continued;"I want to, immensely. My sister is going to Europe, and she has asked me to go with her. If we go, I shall make her stay as long as possible in London.""Ah, you must come in July," said Lord Lambeth.
"That's the time when there is most going on.""I don't think I can wait till July," the young girl rejoined.
