Part 40 (2/2)
His friend looked at him harder. ”That's right, my dear chap. Think of _all_ the bearings.”
”She's a charming girl,” pursued his lords.h.i.+p.
”Of course she's a charming girl. I don't know a girl more charming-in a very quiet way. But there are other charming girls-charming in all sorts of ways-nearer home.”
”I particularly like her spirit,” said Bessie's admirer-almost as on a policy of aggravation.
”What's the peculiarity of her spirit?”
”She's not afraid, and she says things out and thinks herself as good as any one. She's the only girl I've ever seen,” Lord Lambeth explained, ”who hasn't seemed to me dying to marry me.”
Mr. Beaumont considered it. ”How do you know she isn't dying if you haven't felt her pulse? I mean if you haven't asked her?”
”I don't know how; but I know it.”
”I'm sure she asked _me_-over there-questions enough about your property and your t.i.tles,” Percy declared.
”She has done that to me too-again and again,” his friend returned. ”But she wants to know about everything.”
”Everything? Ah, I'll warrant she wants to know. Depend upon it she's dying to marry you just as much, and just by the same law, as all the rest of them.”
It appeared to give the young man, for a moment, something rather special to think of. ”I shouldn't like her to refuse me-I shouldn't like that.”
”If the thing would be so disagreeable then, both to you and to her, in heaven's name leave it alone.” Such was the moral drawn by Mr. Beaumont; which left him practically the last word in the discussion.
Mrs. Westgate, on her side, had plenty to say to her sister about the rarity of the latter's visits and the non-appearance at their own door of the d.u.c.h.ess of Bayswater. She confessed, however, to taking more pleasure in this hush of symptoms than she could have taken in the most lavish attentions on the part of that great lady. ”It's unmistakable,”
she said, ”delightfully unmistakable; a most interesting sign that we've made them wretched. The day we dined with him I was really sorry for the poor boy.” It will have been gathered that the entertainment offered by Lord Lambeth to his American friends had been graced by the presence of no near relation. He had invited several choice spirits to meet them, but the ladies of his immediate family were to Mrs. Westgate's sense-a sense perhaps morbidly acute-conspicuous by their hostile absence.
”I don't want to work you up any further,” Bessie at last ventured to remark, ”but I don't know why you should have so many theories about Lord Lambeth's poor mother. You know a great many young men in New York without knowing their mothers.”
Mrs. Westgate rested deep eyes on her sister and then turned away. ”My dear Bessie, you're superb!”
”One thing's certain”-the girl continued not to blench at her irony. ”If I believed I were a cause of annoyance, however unwitting, to Lord Lambeth's family I should insist-”
”Insist on my leaving England?” Mrs. Westgate broke in.
”No, not that. I want to go to the National Gallery again; I want to see Stratford-on-Avon and Canterbury Cathedral. But I should insist on his ceasing relations with us.”
”That would be very modest and very pretty of you-but you wouldn't do it at this point.”
”Why do you say 'at this point'?” Bessie asked. ”Have I ceased to be modest?”
”You care for him too much. A month ago, when you said you didn't, I believe it was quite true. But at present, my dear child,” said Mrs.
Westgate, ”you wouldn't find it quite so simple a matter never to see Lord Lambeth again. I've watched it come on.”
”You're mistaken,” Bessie declared. ”You don't understand.”
”Ah, you poor proud thing, don't be perverse!” her companion returned.
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