"Yes, you are too historical," said Lord Lambeth, laughing, but thankful

for a formula. "Upon my honor, you are too historical!"
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 were in blossom, and Lord Lambeth,

who quite entered into the spirit of the cockney excursionist,
declared that it was a jolly old place. Bessie Alden was in ecstasies;

she went about murmuring and exclaiming.
"It's too lovely," said the young girl; "it's too enchanting;

it's too exactly what it ought to be!"
At Hampton Court the little flocks of visitors are not provided

with an official bellwether, but are left to browse at discretion
upon the local antiquities. It happened in this manner that,

in default of another informant, Bessie Alden, who on doubtful
questions was able to suggest a great many alternatives, found herself

again applying for intellectualassistance to Lord Lambeth.
But he again assured her that he was utterly helpless in such matters--

that his education had been sadly neglected.
"And I am sorry it makes you unhappy," he added in a moment.

"You are very disappointing, Lord Lambeth," she said.
"Ah, now don't say that," he cried. "That's the worst thing

you could possibly say."
"No," she rejoined, "it is not so bad as to say that I had expected

nothing of you."
"I don't know. Give me a notion of the sort of thing you expected."

"Well," said Bessie Alden, "that you would be more what I should like to be--
what I should try to be--in your place."

"Ah, my place!" exclaimed Lord Lambeth. "You are always talking
about my place.!"

The young girl looked at him; he thought she colored a little;
and for a moment she made no rejoinder.

"Does it strike you that I am always talking about your place?" she asked.
"I am sure you do it a great honor," he said, fearing he had been uncivil.

"I have often thought about it," she went on after a moment.
"I have often thought about your being a hereditarylegislator.

A hereditarylegislator ought to know a great many things."
"Not if he doesn't legislate."

"But you do legislate; it's absurd your saying you don't. You are very much
looked up to here--I am assured of that."

"I don't know that I ever noticed it."
"It is because you are used to it, then. You ought to fill the place."

"How do you mean to fill it?" asked Lord Lambeth.
"You ought to be very clever and brilliant, and to know almost everything."

Lord Lambeth looked at her a moment. "Shall I tell you something?" he asked.
"A young man in my position, as you call it--"

"I didn't invent the term," interposed Bessie Alden.
"I have seen it in a great many books."

"Hang it! you are always at your books. A fellow
in my position, then, does very well whatever he does.

That's about what I mean to say."
"Well, if your own people are content with you,"

said Bessie Alden, laughing, "it is not for me to complain.
But I shall always think that, properly, you should have been

a great mind--a great character."
"Ah, that's very theoretic," Lord Lambeth declared.

"Depend upon it, that's a Yankee prejudice."
"Happy the country," said Bessie Alden, "where even people's

prejudices are so elevated!"
"Well, after all," observed Lord Lambeth, "I don't know that I am

such a fool as you are trying to make me out."
"I said nothing so rude as that; but I must repeat that

you are disappointing."
"My dear Miss Alden," exclaimed the young man, "I am the best

fellow in the world!"
"Ah, if it were not for that!" said Bessie Alden with a smile.

Mrs. Westgate had a good many more friends in London than
she pretended, and before long she had renewed acquaintance

with most of them. Their hospitality was extreme, so that,
one thing leading to another, she began, as the phrase is, to go out.

Bessie Alden, in this way, saw something of what she found
it a great satisfaction to call to herself English society.

She went to balls and danced, she went to dinners and talked,
she went to concerts and listened (at concerts Bessie

always listened), she went to exhibitions and wondered.
Her enjoyment was keen and her curiosity insatiable, and,

grateful in general for all her opportunities, she especially
prized the privilege of meeting certain celebrated persons--

authors and artists, philosophers and statesmen--of whose
renown she had been a humble and distant beholder, and who now,

as a part of the habitual furniture of London drawing rooms,
struck her as stars fallen from the firmament and become palpable--

revealing also sometimes, on contact, qualities not to
have been predicted of sidereal bodies. Bessie, who knew

so many of her contemporaries by reputation, had a good many
personal disappointments; but, on the other hand, she had

innumerable satisfactions and enthusiasms, and she communicated
the emotions of either class to a dear friend, of her own sex,

in Boston, with whom she was in voluminous correspondence.
Some of her reflections, indeed, she attempted to impart

to Lord Lambeth, who came almost every day to Jones's Hotel,
and whom Mrs. Westgate admitted to be really devoted.

Captain Littledale, it appeared, had gone to India; and of
several others of Mrs. Westgate's ex-pensioners--gentlemen who,

as she said, had made, in New York, a clubhouse of her drawing room--
no tidings were to be obtained; but Lord Lambeth was certainly

attentive enough to make up for the accidental absences,
the short memories, all the other irregularities of everyone else.

He drove them in the park, he took them to visit private collections
of pictures, and, having a house of his own, invited them to dinner.

Mrs. Westgate, following the fashion of many of her compatriots,
caused herself and her sister to be presented at the English

court by her diplomatic representative--for it was in this
manner that she alluded to the American minister to England,

inquiring what on earth he was put there for, if not to make
the proper arrangements for one's going to a Drawing Room.

Lord Lambeth declared that he hated Drawing Rooms, but he participated
in the ceremony on the day on which the two ladies at Jones's Hotel

repaired to Buckingham Palace in a remarkable coach which his lordship
had sent to fetch them. He had on a gorgeous uniform, and Bessie Alden

was particularly struck with his appearance--especially when on her
asking him, rather foolishly as she felt, if he were a loyal subject,

he replied that he was a loyal subject to HER. This declaration
was emphasized by his dancing with her at a royal ball to which the two

ladies afterward went, and was not impaired by the fact that she
thought he danced very ill. He seemed to her wonderfully kind;

she asked herself, with growing vivacity, why he should be so kind.
It was his disposition--that seemed the natural answer.

She had told her sister that she liked him very much, and now that she
liked him more she wondered why. She liked him for his disposition;

to this question as well that seemed the natural answer.
When once the impressions of London life began to crowd thickly upon her,

she completely forgot her sister's warning about the cynicism
of public opinion. It had given her great pain at the moment,

but there was no particular reason why she should remember it;
it corresponded too little with any sensiblereality; and it

was disagreeable to Bessie to remember disagreeable things.
So she was not haunted with the sense of a vulgar imputation.

She was not in love with Lord Lambeth--she assured herself of that.
It will immediately be observed that when such assurances become

necessary the state of a young lady's affections is already ambiguous;
and, indeed, Bessie Alden made no attempt to dissimulate--to herself,

of course--a certain tenderness that she felt for the young nobleman.
She said to herself that she liked the type to which he belonged--