And then Lord Lambeth, raising his hat afresh, shook hands with Bessie—“Fancy your being here!” He was blushing and smiling; he looked very handsome and he had a note of splendour he had not had in America. The girl’s free fancy, as we know, was just then in marked exercise; so that the tall young Englishman, as he stood there looking down at her, had the benefit of it. “He’s handsomer and more splendid than anything I’ve ever seen,” she said to herself. And then she remembered he was a Marquis and she thought he somehow looked a Marquis.
“Really, you know,” he cried, “you ought to have let a fellow know you’ve come!”
“I wrote to you an hour ago,” said Mrs. Westgate.
“Doesn’t all the world know it?” smiled Bessie.
“I assure you I didn’t know it!” he insisted. “Upon my honour I hadn’t heard of it. Ask Woodley now; had I, Woodley?”
“Well, I think you’re rather a humbug,” this gentleman brought forth.
“You don’t believe that—do you, Miss Alden?” asked his lordship. “You don’t believe I’m rather a humbug, eh?”
“No,” said Bessie after an instant, but choosing and conferring a grace on the literal—“I don’t.”
“You’re too tall to stand up, Lord Lambeth,” Mrs. Westgate pronounced. “You approach the normal only when you sit down. Be so good as to get a chair.”
He found one and placed it sidewise, close to the two ladies. “If I hadn’t met Woodley I should never have found you,” he went on. “Should I, Woodley?”