hose things,
with us, are much less splendid than in England."

"I fancy you don't mean that," said Lord Lambeth, laughing.

"I assure you I mean everything I say," the young girl declared.
"Certainly, from what I have read about English society, it is very
different."

"Ah well, you know," said her companion, "those things are often
described by fellows who know nothing about them. You mustn't mind what
you read."

"Oh, I SHALL mind what I read!" Bessie Alden rejoined. "When I read
Thackeray and George Eliot, how can I help minding them?"

"Ah well, Thackeray, and George Eliot," said the young nobleman; "I
haven't read much of them."

"Don't you suppose they know about society?" asked Bessie Alden.

"Oh, I daresay they know; they were so very clever. But these
fashionable novels," said Lord Lambeth, "they are awful rot, you know."

His companion looked at him a moment with her dark blue eyes, and then
she looked down in the chasm where the water was tumbling about. "Do you
mean Mrs. Gore, for instance?" she said presently, raising her eyes.

"I am afraid I haven't read that, either," was the young man's
rejoinder, laughing a little and blushing. "I am afraid you'll think I
am not very intellectual."

"Reading Mrs. Gore is no proof of intellect. But I like reading
everything about English life--even poor books. I am so curious about
it."

"Aren't ladies always curious?" asked the young man jestingly.

But Bessie Alden appeared to desire to answer his question seriously. "I
don't think so--I don't think we are enough so--that we care about many
things. So it's all the more of a compliment," she added, "that I should
want to know so much about England."

The logic here seemed a little close; but Lord Lambeth, made conscious
of a compliment, found his natural modesty just at hand. "I am sure you
know a great deal more than I do."

"I really think I know a great deal--for a person who has never been
there."

"Have you really never been there?" cried Lord Lambeth. "Fancy!"

"Never--except in imagination," said the young girl.

"Fancy!" repeated her companion. "But I daresay you'll go soon, won't
you?"

"It's the dream of my life!" declared Bessie Alden, smiling.

"But your sister seems to know a tremendous lot about London," Lord
Lambeth went on.

The young girl was silent a moment. "My sister and I are two very
different persons," she presently said. "She has been a great deal in
Europe. She has b