"I have not read so much. It is because we think so much of them at home.""Oh, I see," observed the young nobleman. "In Boston.""Not only in Boston; everywhere," said Bessie. "We hold them in great honor;they go to the best dinner parties."
"I daresay you are right. I can't say I know many of them.""It's a pity you don't," Bessie Alden declared.
"It would do you good."
"I daresay it would," said Lord Lambeth 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 have talked with two or three of them," the young man went on, "and I thought they had a kind of fawning manner.""Why should they fawn?" Bessie Alden demanded.
"I'm sure I don't know. Why, indeed?"
"Perhaps you only thought so," said Bessie.
"Well, of course," rejoined her companion, "that's a kind of thing that can't be proved.""In America they don't fawn," said Bessie.
"Ah, well, then, they must be better company."Bessie was silent a moment. "That is one of the things I don't like about England," she said; "your keeping the distinguished people apart.""How do you mean apart?"
"Why, letting them come only to certain places.
You never see them."
Lord Lambeth looked at her a moment. "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," repeated the young girl.
"And there are other clever people," added Lord Lambeth simply.
Bessie Alden looked at him, and she gave a light laugh.
"Not many," she said.
On another occasion--just after a dinner party--she told him that there was something else in England she did not like.
"Oh, I say!" he cried, "haven't you abused us enough?""I have never abused you at all," said Bessie; "but I don't like your PRECEDENCE.""It isn't my precedence!" Lord Lambeth declared, laughing.
"Yes, it is yours--just exactly yours; and I think it's odious," said Bessie.
"I never saw such a young lady for discussing things!
Has someone had the impudence to go before you?"asked his lordship.
"It is not the going before me that I object to," said Bessie;"it is their thinking that they have a right to do it--.""I never saw such a young lady as you are for not 'recognizing.'
I have no doubt the thing is BEASTLY, but it saves a lot of trouble.""It makes a lot of trouble. It's horrid," said Bessie.
"But how would you have the first people go?" asked Lord Lambeth.
"They can't go last."
"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," observed Bessie Alden with a very pretty ferocity.
"I am a young girl, so of course I go last; but imagine what Kitty must feel on being informed that she is not at liberty to budge until certain other ladies have passed out.""Oh, I say, she is not 'informed!'" cried Lord Lambeth.
"No one would do such a thing as that."
"She is made to feel it," the young girl insisted--"as if they were afraid she would make a rush for the door. No; you have a lovely country,"said Bessie Alden, "but your precedence is horrid.""I certainly shouldn't think your sister would like it,"rejoined Lord Lambeth with even exaggerated gravity.
But Bessie Alden could induce him to enter no formal protest against this repulsive custom, which he seemed to think an extreme convenience.
Percy Beaumont all this time had been a very much less frequent visitor at Jones's Hotel than his noble kinsman;he had, in fact, called but twice upon the two American ladies.
Lord Lambeth, who often saw him, reproached him with his neglect and declared that, although Mrs. Westgate had said nothing about it, he was sure that she was secretly wounded by it.
"She suffers too much to speak," said Lord Lambeth.
"That's all gammon," said Percy Beaumont; "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 are always there," he said, "and that's reason enough for my not going.""I don't see why. There is enough for both of us.""I don't care to be a witness of your--your reckless passion,"said Percy Beaumont.
Lord Lambeth looked at him with a cold eye and for a moment said nothing.
"It's not so obvious as you might suppose," he rejoined dryly, "considering what a demonstrative beggar I am.""I don't want to know anything about it--nothing whatever,"said Beaumont. "Your mother asks me everytime she sees me whether I believe you are really lost--and Lady Pimlico does the same.
I prefer to be able to answer that I know nothing about it--that I never go there. I stay away for consistency's sake.
As I said the other day, they must look after you themselves.""You are devilish considerate," said Lord Lambeth.
"They never question me."
"They are afraid of you. They are afraid of irritating 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 that you have been with those ladies to the dome of St. 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 that you have 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 American girl, there is serious cause for alarm." Lord Lambeth responded to this intimation by scornful laughter, and his companion continued, after a pause: