"Don't you, really?" asked Lord Lambeth. "I shouldn't have fancied that.""Have you come to study American manners?" asked the young girl.
"Oh, I don't know. I just came over for a lark. I haven't got long."Here there was a pause, and Lord Lambeth began again. "But Mr. Westgate will come down here, will not he?""I certainly hope he will. He must help to entertain you and Mr. Beaumont."Lord Lambeth looked at her a little with his handsome brown eyes.
"Do you suppose he would have come down with us if we had urged him?"Mr. Westgate's sister-in-law was silent a moment, and then, "I daresay he would," she answered.
"Really!" said the young Englishman. "He was immensely civil to Beaumont and me," he added.
"He is a dear good fellow," the young lady rejoined, "and he is a perfect husband. But all Americans are that,"she continued, smiling.
"Really!" Lord Lambeth exclaimed again and wondered whether all American ladies had such a passion for generalizing as these two.
He sat there a good while: there was a great deal of talk;it was all very friendly and lively and jolly. Everyone present, sooner or later, said something to him, and seemed to make a particular point of addressing him by name. Two or three other persons came in, and there was a shifting of seats and changing of places; the gentlemen all entered into intimate conversation with the two Englishmen, made them urgent offers of hospitality, and hoped they might frequently be of service to them.
They were afraid Lord Lambeth and Mr. Beaumont were not very comfortable at their hotel; that it was not, as one of them said, "so private as those dear little English inns of yours."This last gentleman went on to say that unfortunately, as yet, perhaps, privacy was not quite so easily obtained in America as might be desired; still, he continued, you could generally get it by paying for it; in fact, you could get everything in America nowadays by paying for it.
American life was certainly growing a great deal more private;it was growing very much like England. Everything at Newport, for instance, was thoroughly private; Lord Lambeth would probably be struck with that. It was also represented to the strangers that it mattered very little whether their hotel was agreeable, as everyone would want them to make visits;they would stay with other people, and, in any case, they would be a great deal at Mrs. Westgate's. They would find that very charming; it was the pleasantest house in Newport.
It was a pity Mr. Westgate was always away; he was a man of the highest ability--very acute, very acute. He worked like a horse, and he left his wife--well, to do about as she liked.
He liked her to enjoy herself, and she seemed to know how.
She was extremely brilliant and a splendid talker.
Some people preferred her sister; but Miss Alden was very different;she was in a different style altogether. Some people even thought her prettier, and, certainly, she was not so sharp.
She was more in the Boston style; she had lived a great deal in Boston, and she was very highly educated. Boston girls, it was propounded, were more like English young ladies.
Lord Lambeth had presently a chance to test the truth of this proposition, for on the company rising in compliance with a suggestion from their hostess that they should walk down to the rocks and look at the sea, the young Englishman again found himself, as they strolled across the grass, in proximity to Mrs. Westgate's sister. Though she was but a girl of twenty, she appeared to feel the obligation to exert an active hospitality; and this was, perhaps, the more to be noticed as she seemed by nature a reserved and retiring person, and had little of her sister's fraternizing quality.
She was perhaps rather too thin, and she was a little pale; but as she moved slowly over the grass, with her arms hanging at her sides, looking gravely for a moment at the sea and then brightly, for all her gravity, at him, Lord Lambeth thought her at least as pretty as Mrs. Westgate, and reflected that if this was the Boston style the Boston style was very charming.
He thought she looked very clever; he could imagine that she was highly educated; but at the same time she seemed gentle and graceful.
For all her cleverness, however, he felt that she had to think a little what to say; she didn't say the first thing that came into her head;he had come from a different part of the world and from a different society, and she was trying to adapt her conversation. The others were scattering themselves near the rocks; Mrs. Westgate had charge of Percy Beaumont.
"Very jolly place, isn't it?" said Lord Lambeth.
"It's a very jolly place to sit."
"Very charming," said the young girl. "I often sit here;there are all kinds of cozy corners--as if they had been made on purpose.""Ah! I suppose you have had some of them made," said the young man.
Miss Alden looked at him a moment. "Oh no, we have had nothing made.
It's pure nature."
"I should think you would have a few little benches--rustic seats and that sort of thing. It might be so jolly to sit here, you know,"Lord Lambeth went on.
"I am afraid we haven't so many of those things as you,"said the young girl thoughtfully.
"I daresay you go in for pure nature, as you were saying.
Nature over here must be so grand, you know." And Lord Lambeth looked about him.
The little coast line hereabouts was very pretty, but it was not at all grand, and Miss Alden appeared to rise to a perception of this fact. "I am afraid it seems to you very rough," she said.
"It's not like the coast scenery in Kingsley's novels.""Ah, the novels always overdo it, you know," Lord Lambeth rejoined.
"You must not go by the novels."
They were wandering about a little on the rocks, and they stopped and looked 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.