The room within was dark, but in a moment a graceful figure vaguely shaped itself in the rich-looking gloom, and a lady came to meet them. Then they saw that she had been seated at a table writing, and that she had heard them and had got up.
She stepped out into the light; she wore a frank, charming smile, with which she held out her hand to Percy Beaumont.
"Oh, you must be Lord Lambeth and Mr. Beaumont," she said.
"I have heard from my husband that you would come. I am extremely glad to see you." And she shook hands with each of her visitors.
Her visitors were a little shy, but they had very good manners;they responded with smiles and exclamations, and they apologized for not knowing the front door. The lady rejoined, with vivacity, that when she wanted to see people very much she did not insist upon those distinctions, and that Mr. Westgate had written to her of his English friends in terms that made her really anxious.
"He said you were so terribly prostrated," said Mrs. Westgate.
"Oh, you mean by the heat?" replied Percy Beaumont.
"We were rather knocked up, but we feel wonderfully better.
We had such a jolly--a-- voyage down here. It's so very good of you to mind.""Yes, it's so very kind of you," murmured Lord Lambeth.
Mrs. Westgate stood smiling; she was extremely pretty. "Well, I did mind,"she said; "and I thought of sending for you this morning to the Ocean House.
I am very glad you are better, and I am charmed you have arrived.
You must come round to the other side of the piazza." And she led the way, with a light, smooth step, looking back at the young men and smiling.
The other side of the piazza was, as Lord Lambeth presently remarked, a very jolly place. It was of the most liberal proportions, and with its awnings, its fanciful chairs, its cushions and rugs, its view of the ocean, close at hand, tumbling along the base of the low cliffs whose level tops intervened in lawnlike smoothness, it formed a charming complement to the drawing room. As such it was in course of use at the present moment; it was occupied by a social circle.
There were several ladies and two or three gentlemen, to whom Mrs. Westgate proceeded to introduce the distinguished strangers.
She mentioned a great many names very freely and distinctly;the young Englishmen, shuffling about and bowing, were rather bewildered.
But at last they were provided with chairs--low, wicker chairs, gilded, and tied with a great many ribbons--and one of the ladies (a very young person, with a little snub nose and several dimples)offered Percy Beaumont a fan. The fan was also adorned with pink love knots; but Percy Beaumont declined it, although he was very hot.
Presently, however, it became cooler; the breeze from the sea was delicious, the view was charming, and the people sitting there looked exceedingly fresh and comfortable. Several of the ladies seemed to be young girls, and the gentlemen were slim, fair youths, such as our friends had seen the day before in New York.
The ladies were working upon bands of tapestry, and one of the young men had an open book in his lap. Beaumont afterward learned from one of the ladies that this young man had been reading aloud, that he was from Boston and was very fond of reading aloud.
Beaumont said it was a great pity that they had interrupted him;he should like so much (from all he had heard) to hear a Bostonian read.
Couldn't the young man be induced to go on?
"Oh no," said his informant very freely; "he wouldn't be able to get the young ladies to attend to him now."There was something very friendly, Beaumont perceived, in the attitude of the company; they looked at the young Englishmen with an air of animated sympathy and interest; they smiled, brightly and unanimously, at everything either of the visitors said.
Lord Lambeth and his companion felt that they were being made very welcome. Mrs. Westgate seated herself between them, and, talking a great deal to each, they had occasion to observe that she was as pretty as their friend Littledale had promised.
She was thirty years old, with the eyes and the smile of a girl of seventeen, and she was extremely light and graceful, elegant, exquisite. Mrs. Westgate was extremely spontaneous.
She was very frank and demonstrative and appeared always--while she looked at you delightedly with her beautiful young eyes--to be making sudden confessions and concessions, after momentary hesitations.
"We shall expect to see a great deal of you," she said to Lord Lambeth with a kind of joyous earnestness. "We are very fond of Englishmen here; that is, there are a great many we have been fond of. After a day or two you must come and stay with us;we hope you will stay a long time. Newport's a very nice place when you come really to know it, when you know plenty of people.
Of course you and Mr. Beaumont will have no difficulty about that.
Englishmen are very well received here; there are almost always two or three of them about. I think they always like it, and I must say I should think they would. They receive ever so much attention. I must say I think they sometimes get spoiled;but I am sure you and Mr. Beaumont are proof against that.
My husband tells me you are a friend of Captain Littledale;he was such a charming man. He made himself most agreeable here, and I am sure I wonder he didn't stay. It couldn't have been pleasanter for him in his own country, though, I suppose, it is very pleasant in England, for English people.
I don't know myself; I have been there very little.
I have been a great deal abroad, but I am always on the Continent.
I must say I'm extremely fond of Paris; you know we Americans always are; we go there when we die. Did you ever hear that before?
That was said by a great wit, I mean the good Americans;but we are all good; you'll see that for yourself.
All I know of England is London, and all I know of London is that place on that little corner, you know, where you buy jackets--jackets with that coarse braid and those big buttons.
