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.”

Percy Beaumont, however, continued to aim at lucidity. “You don’t, it’s true, quite redeem your threats. You said the other day you’d make your mother call.”

Lord Lambeth just hung fire. “Well, I asked her to.”

“And she declined?”

“Yes, but she shall do it yet.”

“Upon my word,” said Percy, “if she gets much more scared I verily believe she will.” His friend watched him on this, and he went on. “She’ll go to the girl herself.”

“How do you mean ‘go’ to her?”

“She’ll try to get ‘at’ her — to square her. She won’t care what she does.”

Lord Lambeth turned away in silence; he took twenty steps and slowly returned. “She had better take care what she does. I’ve invited Mrs. Westgate and Miss Alden to Branches, and this evening I shall name a day.”

“And shall you invite your mother and your sisters to meet them?”

Lord Lambeth indulged in one of his rare discriminations. “I shall give them the opportunity.”

“That will touch the Duchess up,” said Percy Beaumont. “I ‘guess’ she’ll come.”

“She may do as she pleases.”

“Then do you really propose to marry the little sister?”

“I like the way you talk about it!” the young man cried. “She won’t gobble me down. Don’t be afraid.”

“She won’t leave you on your knees,” Percy declared. “What the devil’s the inducement?”

“You talk about proposing — wait till I have proposed,” Lord Lambeth went on.

His friend looked at him harder. “That’s right, my dear chap. Think of all the bearings.”

“She’s a charming girl,” pursued his lordship.

“Of course she’s a charming girl. I don’t know a girl more charming — in a very quiet way. But there are other charming girls — charming in all sorts of ways — nearer home.”

“I particularly like her spirit,” said Bessie’s admirer — almost as on a policy of aggravation.

“What’s the peculiarity of her spirit?”

“She’s not afraid, and she says things out and thinks herself as good as any one. She’s the only girl I’ve ever seen,” Lord Lambeth explained, “who hasn’t seemed to me dying to marry me.”

Mr. Beaumont considered it. “How do you know she isn’t dying if you haven’t felt her pulse? I mean if you haven’t asked her?”

“I don’t know how; but I know it.”

“I’m sure she asked me— over there — questions enough about your property and your titles,” Percy declared.

“She has done that to me too — again and again,” his friend returned. “But she wants to know about everything.”

“Everything? Ah, I’ll warrant she wants to know. Depend upon it she’s dying to marry you just as much, and just by the same law, as all the rest of them.”

It appeared to give the young man, for a moment, something rather special to think of. “I shouldn’t like her to refuse me — I shouldn’t like that.”

“If the thing would be so disagreeable then, both to you and to her, in heaven’s name leave it alone.” Such was the moral drawn by Mr. Beaumont; which left him practically the last word in the discussion.

Mrs. Westgate, on her side, had plenty to say to her sister about the rarity of the latter’s visits and the non-appearance at their own door of the Duchess of Bayswater. She confessed, however, to taking more pleasure in this hush of symptoms than she could have taken in the most lavish attentions on the part of that great lady. “It’s unmistakable,” she said, “delightfully unmistakable; a most interesting sign that we’ve made them wretched. The day we dined with him I was really sorry for the poor boy.” It will have been gathered that the entertainment offered by Lord Lambeth to his American friends had been graced by the presence of no near relation. He had invited several choice spirits to meet them, but the ladies of his immediate family were to Mrs. Westgate’s sense — a sense perhaps morbidly acute — conspicuous by their hostile absence.

“I don’t want to work you up any further,” Bessie at last ventured to remark, “but I don’t know why you should have so many theories about Lord Lambeth’s poor mother. You know a great many young men in New York without knowing their mothers.”

Mrs. Westgate rested deep eyes on her sister and then turned away. “My dear Bessie, you’re superb!”

“One thing’s certain”— the girl continued not to blench at her irony. “If I believed I were a cause of annoyance, however unwitting, to Lord Lambeth’s family I should insist —”

“Insist on my leaving England?” Mrs. Westgate broke in.

“No, not that. I want to go to the National Gallery again; I want to see Stratford-on-Avon and Canterbury Cathedral. But I should insist on his ceasing relations with us.”

“That would be very modest and very pretty of you — but you wouldn’t do it at this point.”

“Why do you say ‘at this point’?” Bessie asked. “Have I ceased to be modest?”

“You care for him too much. A month ago, when you said you didn’t, I believe it was quite true. But at present, my dear child,” said Mrs. Westgate, “you wouldn’t find it quite so simple a matter never to see Lord Lambeth again. I’ve watched it come on.”

“You’re mistaken,” Bessie declared. “You don’t understand.”

“Ah, you poor proud thing, don’t be perverse!” her companion returned.

The girl gave the matter, thus admonished, some visible thought. “I know him better certainly, if you mean that. And I like him very much. But I don’t like him enough to make trouble for him with his family. However, I don’t believe in that.”

“I like the way you say ‘however’!” Mrs. Westgate commented. “Do you pretend you wouldn’t be glad to marry him?”

Again Bessie calmly considered. “It would take a great deal more than is at all imaginable to make me marry him.”

Her relative showed an impatience. “And what’s the great difficulty?”

“The great difficulty is that I shouldn’t care to,” said Bessie Alden.

The morning after Lord Lambeth had had with his own frankest critic that exchange of ideas which has just been narrated, the ladies at Jones’s Hotel received from him a written invitation to pay their projected visit to Branches Castle on the following Tuesday. “I think I’ve made up a very pleasant party,” his lordship went on. “Several people whom you know, and my mother and sisters, who have been accidentally prevented from making your acquaintance sooner.” Bessie at this lost no time in calling her sister’s attention to the injustice she had done the Duchess of Bayswater, whose hostility was now proved to be a vain illusion.

“Wait till you see if she comes,” said Mrs. Westgate. “And if she’s to meet us at her son’s house the obligation’s all the greater for her to call on us.”

Bessie hadn’t to wait long, for it appeared that her friend’s parent now descried the direction in which, according to her companion’s observation, courtesy pointed. On the morrow, early in the afternoon, two cards were brought to the apartment of the American ladies — one of them bearing the name of the Duchess of Bayswater and the other that of the Countess of Pimlico. Mrs. Westgate glanced at the clock. “It isn’t yet four,” she said; “they’ve come early; they want really to find us. We’ll receive them.” And she gave orders that her visitors should be admitted. A few moments later they were introduced and a solemn exchange of amenities took place. The Duchess was a large lady with a fine fresh colour; the Countess of Pimlico was very pretty and elegant.

The Duchess looked about her as she sat down — looked not especially at Mrs. Westgate. “I daresay my son has told you that I’ve been wanting to come to see you,” she dropped — and from no towering nor inconvenient height.

“You’re very kind,” said Mrs. Westgate vaguely — her conscience not allowing her to assent to this proposition, and indeed not permitting her to enunciate her own with any appreciable emphasis.

“He tells us you were so kind to him in America,” said the Duchess.

“We’re very glad,” Mrs. Westgate replied, “to have been able to make him feel a little more — a little less — a little at home.”

“I think he stayed at your house,” the visitor more heavily breathed, but as an overture, across to Bessie Alden.

Mrs. Westgate intercepted the remark. “A very short time indeed.”

“Oh!” said the Duchess; and she continued to address her interest to Bessie, who............