insman. "What am I to do?"

Percy Beaumont was annoyed as well; he had deemed it his duty, as I have
narrated, to write to the duchess, but he had not expected that this
distinguished woman would act so promptly upon his hint. "It means,"
he said, "that your father is laid up. I don't suppose it's anything
serious; but you have no option. Take the first steamer; but don't be
alarmed."

Lord Lambeth made his farewells; but the few last words that he
exchanged with Bessie Alden are the only ones that have a place in our
record. "Of course I needn't assure you," he said, "that if you should
come to England next year, I expect to be the first person that you
inform of it."

Bessie Alden looked at him a little, and she smiled. "Oh, if we come to
London," she answered, "I should think you would hear of it."

Percy Beaumont returned with his cousin, and his sense of duty compelled
him, one windless afternoon, in mid-Atlantic, to say to Lord Lambeth
that he suspected that the duchess's telegram was in part the result
of something he himself had written to her. "I wrote to her--as I
explicitly notified you I had promised to do--that you were extremely
interested in a little American girl."

Lord Lambeth was extremely angry, and he indulged for some moments
in the simple language of indignation. But I have said that he was a
reasonable young man, and I can give no better proof of it than the fact
that he remarked to his companion at the end of half an hour, "You were
quite right, after all. I am very much interested in her. Only, to
be fair," he added, "you should have told my mother also that she is
not--seriously--interested in me."

Percy Beaumont gave a little laugh. "There is nothing so charming as
modesty in a young man in your position. That speech is a capital proof
that you are sweet on her."

"She is not interested--she is not!" Lord Lambeth repeated.

"My dear fellow," said his companion, "you are very far gone."

PART II

In point of fact, as Percy Beaumont would have said, Mrs. Westgate
disembarked on the 18th of May on the British coast. She was accompanied
by her sister, but she was not attended by any other member of her
family. To the deprivation of her husband's society Mrs. Westgate
was, however, habituated; she had made half a dozen journeys to Europe
without him, and she now accounted for his absence, to interrogative
friends on this side of the Atlantic, by allusion to the regrettable