“Have you really never been there?” cried Lord Lambeth. “Fancy!”
“Never—except in imagination,” said the young girl.
“Fancy!” repeated her companion. “But I daresay you’ll go soon, won’t you?”
“It’s the dream of my life!” declared Bessie Alden, smiling.
“But your sister seems to know a tremendous lot about London,” Lord Lambeth went on.
The young girl was silent a moment. “My sister and I are two very different persons,” she presently said. “She has been a great deal in Europe. She has been in England several times. She has known a great many English people.”
“But you must have known some, too,” said Lord Lambeth.
“I don’t think that I have ever spoken to one before. You are the first Englishman that—to my knowledge—I have ever talked with.”
Bessie Alden made this statement with a certain gravity—almost, as it seemed to Lord Lambeth, an impressiveness. Attempts at impressiveness always made him feel awkward, and he now began to laugh and swing his stick. “Ah, you would have been sure to know!” he said. And then he added, after an instant, “I’m sorry I am not a better specimen.”
The young girl looked away; but she smiled, laying aside her impressiveness. “You must remember that you are only a beginning,” she said. Then she retraced her steps, leading the way back to the lawn, where they saw Mrs. Westgate come toward them with Percy Beaumont still at her side. “Perhaps I shall go to England next year,” Miss Alden continued; “I want to, immensely. My sister is going to Europe, and she has asked me to go with her. If we go, I shall make her stay as long as possible in London.”