down 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 there for some moments in silence. The young girl looked
at her companion, observing him attentively, but covertly, as women,
even when very young, know how to do. Lord Lambeth repaid observation;
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 look of intellectual repose and gentle good
temper which seemed somehow to be consequent upon his well-cut nose and
chin. And to speak of Lord Lambeth's expression of intellectual repose
is not simply a civil way of saying that he looked stupid. He was
evidently not a young man of an irritable imagination; he was not, as
he would himself have said, tremendously clever; but though there was a
kind of appealing dullness in his eye, he looked thoroughly reasonable
and competent, and his appearance proclaimed that to be a nobleman,
an athlete, and an excellent fellow was a sufficiently brilliant
combination of qualities. The young girl beside him, it may be attested
without further delay, thought him the handsomest young man she had ever
seen; and Bessie Alden's imagination, unlike that of her companion,
was irritable. He, however, was also making up his mind that she was
uncommonly pretty.

"I daresay it's very gay here, that you have lots of balls and parties,"
he said; for, if he was not tremendously clever, he rather prided
himself on having, with women, a sufficiency of conversation.

"Oh, yes, there is a great deal going on," Bessie Alden replied. "There
are not so many balls, but there are a good many other things. You will
see for yourself; we live rather in the midst of it."

"It's very kind of you to say that. But I thought you Americans were
always dancing."

"I suppose we dance a good deal; but I have never seen much of it. We
don't do it much, at any rate, in summer. And I am sure," said Bessie
Alden, "that we don't have so many balls as you have in England."

"Really!" exclaimed Lord Lambeth. "Ah, in England it all depends, you
know."

"You will not think much of our gaieties," said the young girl, looking
at him with a little mixture of interrogation and decision which was
peculiar to her. The interrogation seemed earnest and the decision
seemed arch; but the mixture, at any rate, was charming. "T