it," rejoined Lord
Lambeth with even exaggerated gravity. But Bessie Alden could induce
him to enter no formal protest against this repulsive custom, which he
seemed to think an extreme convenience.

Percy Beaumont all this time had been a very much less frequent visitor
at Jones's Hotel than his noble kinsman; he had, in fact, called but
twice upon the two American ladies. Lord Lambeth, who often saw him,
reproached him with his neglect and declared that, although Mrs.
Westgate had said nothing about it, he was sure that she was secretly
wounded by it. "She suffers too much to speak," said Lord Lambeth.

"That's all gammon," said Percy Beaumont; "there's a limit to what
people can suffer!" And, though sending no apologies to Jones's Hotel,
he undertook in a manner to explain his absence. "You are always there,"
he said, "and that's reason enough for my not going."

"I don't see why. There is enough for both of us."

"I don't care to be a witness of your--your reckless passion," said
Percy Beaumont.

Lord Lambeth looked at him with a cold eye and for a moment said
nothing. "It's not so obvious as you might suppose," he rejoined dryly,
"considering what a demonstrative beggar I am."

"I don't want to know anything about it--nothing whatever," said
Beaumont. "Your mother asks me everytime she sees me whether I believe
you are really lost--and Lady Pimlico does the same. I prefer to be able
to answer that I know nothing about it--that I never go there. I stay
away for consistency's sake. As I said the other day, they must look
after you themselves."

"You are devilish considerate," said Lord Lambeth. "They never question
me."

"They are afraid of you. They are afraid of irritating you and making
you worse. So they go to work very cautiously, and, somewhere or other,
they get their information. They know a great deal about you. They
know that you have been with those ladies to the dome of St. Paul's
and--where was the other place?--to the Thames Tunnel."

"If all their knowledge is as accurate as that, it must be very
valuable," said Lord Lambeth.

"Well, at any rate, they know that you have been visiting the 'sights
of the metropolis.' They think--very naturally, as it seems to me--that
when you take to visiting the sights of the metropolis with a little
American girl, there is serious cause for alarm." Lord Lambeth responded
to this intimation by scornful laughter, and his companion continued,
after a pause: