Lord Lambeth came to see them on the morrow, bringing Percy Beaumont with him — the latter having at once declared his intention of neglecting none of the usual offices of civility. This declaration, however, on his kinsman’s informing him of the advent of the two ladies, had been preceded by another exchange.

“Here they are then and you’re in for it.”

“And what am I in for?” the younger man had inquired.

“I’ll let your mother give it a name. With all respect to whom,” Percy had added, “I must decline on this occasion to do any more police duty. The Duchess must look after you herself.”

“I’ll give her a chance,” the Duchess’s son had returned a trifle grimly. “I shall make her go and see them.”

“She won’t do it, my boy.”

“We’ll see if she doesn’t,” said Lord Lambeth.

But if Mr. Beaumont took a subtle view of the arrival of the fair strangers at Jones’s Hotel he was sufficiently capable of a still deeper refinement to offer them a smiling countenance. He fell into animated conversation — conversation animated at least on her side — with Mrs. Westgate, while his companion appealed more confusedly to the younger lady. Mrs. Westgate began confessing and protesting, declaring and discriminating.

“I must say London’s a great deal brighter and prettier just now than it was when I was here last — in the month of November. There’s evidently a great deal going on, and you seem to have a good many flowers. I’ve no doubt it’s very charming for all you people and that you amuse yourselves immensely. It’s very good of you to let Bessie and me come and sit and look at you. I suppose you’ll think I’m very satirical, but I must confess that that’s the feeling I have in London.”

“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand to what feeling you allude,” said Percy Beaumont.

“The feeling that it’s all very well for you English people. Everything’s beautifully arranged for you.”

“It seems to me it’s very well arranged here for some Americans sometimes,” Percy plucked up spirit to answer.

“For some of them, yes — if they like to be patronised. But I must say I don’t like to be patronised. I may be very eccentric and undisciplined and unreasonable, but I confess I never was fond of patronage. I like to associate with people on the same terms as I do in my own country; that’s a peculiar taste that I have. But here people seem to expect something else — really I can’t make out quite what. I’m afraid you’ll think I’m very ungrateful, for I certainly have received in one way and another a great deal of attention. The last time I was here a lady sent me a message that I was at liberty to come and pay her my respects.”

“Dear me, I hope you didn’t go,” Mr. Beaumont cried.

“You’re deliciously na?f, I must say that for you!” Mrs. Westgate promptly pursued. “It must be a great advantage to you here in London. I suppose that if I myself had a little more na?veté— of your blessed national lack of any approach to a sense for shades — I should enjoy it more. I should be content to sit on a chair in the Park and see the people pass, to be told that this is the Duchess of Suffolk and that the Lord Chamberlain, and that I must be thankful for the privilege of beholding them. I daresay it’s very peevish and critical of me to ask for anything else. But I was always critical — it’s the joy of my life — and I freely confess to the sin of being fastidious. I’m told there’s some remarkably superior second-rate society provided here for strangers. Merci! I don’t want any superior second-rate society. I want the society I’ve been accustomed to.”

Percy mustered a rueful gaiety. “I hope you don’t call Lambeth and me second-rate!”

“Oh I’m accustomed to you!” said Mrs. Westgate. “Do you know you English sometimes make the most wonderful speeches? The first time I came to London I went out to dine — as I told you, I’ve received a great deal of attention. After dinner, in the drawing-room, I had some conversation with an old lady — no, you mustn’t look that way: I assure you I had! I forget what we talked about, but she presently said, in allusion to something we were discussing: ‘Oh, you know, the aristocracy do so-and-so, but in one’s own class of life it’s very different.’ In one’s own class of life! What’s a poor unprotected American woman to do in a country where she is liable to have that sort of thing said to her?”

“I should say she’s not to mind, not a rap — though you seem to get hold of some very queer old ladies. I compliment you on your acquaintance!” Percy pursued. “If you’re trying to bring me to admit that London’s an odious place you’ll not succeed. I’m extremely fond of it and think it the jolliest place in the world.”

“Pour vous autres — I never said the contrary,” Mrs. Westgate retorted — an expression made use of, this last, because both interlocutors had begun to raise their voices. Mr. Beaumont naturally didn’t like to hear the seat of his existence abused, and Mrs. Westgate, no less naturally, didn’t like a stubborn debater.

“Hallo!” said Lord Lambeth; “what are they up to now?” And he came away from the window, where he had been standing with Bessie.

“I quite agree with a very clever countrywoman of mine,” the elder lady continued with charming ardour even if with imperfect relevancy. She smiled at the two gentlemen for a moment with terrible brightness, as if to toss at their feet — upon their native heath — the gauntlet of defiance. “For me there are only two social positions worth speaking of — that of an American lady and that of the Emperor of Russia.”

“And what do you do with the American gentlemen?” asked Lord Lambeth.

“She leaves them in America!” said his comrade.

On the departure of their visitors Bessie mentioned that Lord Lambeth would come the next day, to go with them to the Tower, and that he had kindly offered to bring his “trap” and drive them all through the city. Mrs. Westgate listened in silence to this news and for some time afterwards also said nothing. But at last, “If you hadn’t requested me the other day not to speak of it,” she began, “there’s something I’d make bold to ask you.” Bessie frowned a little; her dark blue eyes grew more dark than blue. But her sister went on. “As it is I’ll take the risk. You’re not in love with Lord Lambeth: I believe it perfectly. Very good. But is there by chance any danger of your becoming so? It’s a very simple question — don’t take offence. I’ve a particular reason,” said Mrs. Westgate, “for wanting to know.”

Bessie for some moments said nothing; she only looked displeased. “No; there’s no danger,” she at last answered with a certain dryness.

“Then I should like to frighten them!” cried her sister, clasping jewelled hands.

“To frighten whom?”

“All these people. Lord Lambeth’s family and friends.”

The girl wondered. “How should you frighten them?”

“It wouldn’t be I— it would be you. It would frighten them to suppose you holding in thrall his lordship’s young affections.”

Our young lady, her clear eyes still overshadowed by her dark brows, continued to examine it. “Why should that frighten them?”

Mrs. Westgate winged her shaft with a smile before launching it. “Because they think you’re not good enough. You’re a charming girl, beautiful and amiable, intelligent and clever, and as bien-élevée as it is possible to be; but you’re not a fit match for Lord Lambeth.”

Bessie showed again a coldness. “Where do you get such extraordinary ideas? You’ve said some such odd things lately. My dear Kitty, where do you collect them?”

But Kitty, unabashed, held to her idea. “Yes, it would put them on pins and needles, and it wouldn’t hurt you. Mr. Beaumont’s already most uneasy. I could soon see that.”

The girl turned it over. “Do you mean they spy on him, that they interfere with him?”

“I don’t know what power they have to interfere, but I know that a British materfamilias— and when she’s a Duchess into the bargain — is often a force to be reckoned with.”

It has already been intimated that before certain appearances of strange or sinister cast our young woman was apt to shy off into scepticism. She abstained on the present occasion from expressing disbelief, for she wished not to irritate her sister. But she said to herself that Kitty had been misinformed — that this was a traveller’s tale. Though she was a girl of quick imagination there could in the nature of things be no truth for her in the attribution to her of a vulgar identity. Only the form she gave her doubt was: “I must say that in that case I’m very sorry for Lord Lambeth.”

Mrs. Westgate, more and more exhilarated by her own scheme, irradiated interest. “If I could only believe it was safe! But when you begin to pity him I, on my side, am afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Of your pitying him too much.”

Bessie turned impatiently off — then at the end of a minute faced about. “What if I should pity him too much?”

Mrs. Westgate hereupon averted herself, but after a moment’s reflexion met the case. “It would come, after all, to the same thing.”

Lord Lambeth came the next day with his trap, when the two ladies, attended by Willie Woodley, placed themselves under his guidance and were conveyed eastward, through some of the most fascinating, as Bessie called them, even though the duskiest districts, to the great turreted donjon that overlooks the London shipping. They alighted together to enter the famous fortress, where they secured the services of a venerable beef-eater, who, ignoring the presence of other dependants on his leisure, made a fine exclusive party of them and marched them through courts and corridors, through armouries and prisons. He delivered his usual peripatetic discourse, and they stopped and stared and peeped and stooped according as he marshalled and directed them. Bessie appealed to this worthy — even on more heads than he seemed aware of; she overtaxed, in her earnestness, his learnt lesson and found the place, as she more than once mentioned to him, quite delirious. Lord Lambeth was in high good-humour; his delirium at least was gay and he betrayed afresh that aptitude for the simpler forms of ironic comment that the girl had noted in him. Willie Woodley kept looking at the ceilings and tapping the walls with the knuckle of a pearl-grey glove; and Mrs. Westgate, asking at frequent intervals to be allowed to sit down and wait till they came back, was as frequently informed that they would never do anything so weak. When it befell that Bessie’s glowing appeals, chiefly on collateral points of English history, but left the warder gaping she resorted straight to Lord Lambeth. His lordship then pleaded gross incompetence, declaring he knew nothing about that sort of thing and greatly diverted, to all appearance, at being treated as an authority.

“You can’t honestly expect people to know as awfully much as you,” he said.

“I should expect you to know a great deal more,” Bessie Alden returned.

“Well, women always know more than men about names and dates and historical characters,” he said. “There was Lady Jane Grey we’ve just been hearing about, who went in for Latin and Greek and all the learning of her age.”

“You have no right to be ignorant at all events,” Bessie argued with all her freedom.

“Why haven’t I as good a right as any one else?”

“Because you’ve lived in the midst of all these things.”

“What things do you mean? Axes and blocks and thumbscrews?”

“All these historical things. You belong to an historical family.”

“Bessie really harks back too much to the dead past — she makes too much of it,” Mrs. Westgate opined, catching the sense of this colloquy.

“Yes, you hark back,” the young man laughed, thankful for a formula. “You do make too much of the dead past.”

He went with the ladies a couple of days later to Hampton Court, Willie Woodley being also of the party. The afternoon was charming, the famous horse-chestnuts blossomed to admiration, and Lord Lambeth, who found in Miss Alden the improving governess, he declared, of his later immaturity, as Mademoiselle Boquet, dragging him by the hand to view all lions, had been that of his earliest, pronounced the old red palace not half so beastly as he had supposed. Bessie herself rose to raptures; she went about murmuring and “raving.” “It’s too lovely; it’s too enchanting; it’s too exactly what it ought to be!”

At Hampton Court the tinkling flocks are not provided with an official bellwether, but are left to browse at discretion on the tough herbage of History. It happened in this manner that, in default of another informant, our young woman, who on doubtful questions was able to suggest a great many alternatives, found herself again apply for judicious support to Lord Lambeth. He, however, could but once more declare himself a broken reed and that his education, in such matters, had been sadly neglected.

“And I’m sorry it makes you so wretched,” he further professed.

“You’re so disappointing, you know,” she returned; but more in pity — pity for herself — than in anger.

“Ah, now, don’t say that! That’s the worst thing you could possibly say.”

“No”— she spoke with a sad lucidity —“it’s not so bad as to say that I had expected nothing of you.”

“I don’t know”— and he seemed to rejoice in a chance to demur. “Give me a notion of the sort of thing you expected.”

“Well, that you’d be more what I should like to be — what I should try to be — in your place.”

“Ah, my place!” he groaned. “You’re always talking about my place.”

The girl gave him a look; he might have thought she coloured; and for a little she made no rejoinder. “Does it strike you that I’m always talking about your place?”

“I’m sure you do it a great honour,” he said as if fearing he had sounded uncivil.

“I’ve often thought about it,” she went on after a moment. “I’ve often thought of your future as an hereditary legislator. An hereditary legislator ought to know so many things, oughtn’t he?”

“Not if he doesn’t legislate.”

“But you will legislate one of these days — you may have to at any time; it’s absurd your saying you won’t. You’re very much looked up to here — I’m assured of that.”

“I don’t know that I ever noticed it.”

“It’s because you’re used to it then. You ought to fill the place.”

“How do you mean, fill it?” asked Lord Lambeth.

“You ought to be very clever and brilliant — to be ‘up’ in almost everythin............