“I suppose he is,” said Mrs. Westgate.
Lord Lambeth sat for nearly an hour with his American friends; but it is not our purpose to relate their conversation in full. He addressed a great many remarks to Bessie Alden, and finally turned toward her altogether, while Willie Woodley entertained Mrs. Westgate. Bessie herself said very little; she was on her guard, thinking of what her sister had said to her at lunch. Little by little, however, she interested herself in Lord Lambeth again, as she had done at Newport; only it seemed to her that here he might become more interesting. He would be an unconscious part of the antiquity, the impressiveness, the picturesqueness, of England; and poor Bessie Alden, like many a Yankee maiden, was terribly at the mercy of picturesqueness.
“I have often wished I were at Newport again,” said the young man. “Those days I spent at your sister’s were awfully jolly.”
“We enjoyed them very much; I hope your father is better.”
“Oh, dear, yes. When I got to England, he was out grouse shooting. It was what you call in America a gigantic fraud. My mother had got nervous. My three weeks at Newport seemed like a happy dream.”
“America certainly is very different from England,” said Bessie.
“I hope you like England better, eh?” Lord Lambeth rejoined almost persuasively.
“No Englishman can ask that seriously of a person of another country.”
Her companion looked at her for a moment. “You mean it’s a matter of course?”
“If I were English,” said Bessie, “it would certainly seem to me a matter of course that everyone should be a good patriot.”