They wandered a little on the rocks; they stopped to look into a narrow chasm where the rising tide made a curious bellowing sound. It was loud enough to prevent their hearing each other, and they stood for some moments in silence. The girl’s eyes took in her companion, observing him attentively but covertly, as those of women even in blinking youth know how to do. Lord Lambeth repaid contemplation; tall straight and strong, he was handsome as certain young Englishmen, and certain young Englishmen almost alone, are handsome; with a perfect finish of feature and a visible repose of mind, an inaccessibility to questions, somehow stamped in by the same strong die and pressure that nature, designing a precious medal, had selected and applied. It was not that he looked stupid; it was only, we assume, that his perceptions didn’t show in his face for restless or his imagination for irritable. He was not, as he would himself have said, tremendously clever; but, though there was rather a constant appeal for delay in his waiting, his perfectly patient eye, this registered simplicity had its beauty as well and, whatever it might have appeared to plead for, didn’t plead in the name of indifference or inaction. This most searching of his new friends thought him the handsomest young man she had ever seen; and Bessie Alden’s imagination, unlike that of her companion, was irritable. He, however, had already made up his mind, quite originally and without aid, that she had a grace exceedingly her own.
“I daresay it’s very gay here—that you’ve lots of balls and parties,” he said; since, though not tremendously clever, he rather prided himself on having with women a strict sufficiency of conversation.
“Oh yes, there’s a great deal going on. There are not so many balls, but there are a good many other pleasant things,” Bessie Alden explained. “You’ll see for yourself; we live rather in the midst of it.”
“It will be very kind of you to let us see. But I thought you Americans were always dancing.”
“I suppose we dance a good deal, though I’ve never seen much of it. We don’t do it much, at any rate in summer. And I’m sure,” she said, “that we haven’t as many balls as you in England.”
He wondered—these so many prompt assumptions about his own country made him gape a little. “Ah, in England it all depends, you know.”
“You’ll not think much of our gaieties,” she said—though she seemed to settle it for him with a quaver of interrogation. The interrogation sounded earnest indeed and the decision arch; the mixture, at any rate, was charming. “Those things with us are much less splendid than in England.”
“I fancy you don’t really mean that,” her companion laughed.
“I assure you I really mean everything I say,” she returned. “Certainly from what I’ve read about English society it is very different.”
“Ah well, you know,” said Lord Lambeth, who appeared to cling to this general theory, “those things are often described by fellows who know nothing about them. You mustn’t mind what you read.”