to the
point of not thinking it delightful."

"Oh, I say!" cried Lord Lambeth again.

"I don't see anything delightful in my disagreeing with Mrs. Westgate,"
said Percy Beaumont.

"Well, I do!" Mrs. Westgate declared; and she turned to her sister. "You
know you have to go to town. The phaeton is there. You had better take
Lord Lambeth."

At this point Percy Beaumont certainly looked straight at his kinsman;
he tried to catch his eye. But Lord Lambeth would not look at him; his
own eyes were better occupied. "I shall be very happy," cried Bessie
Alden. "I am only going to some shops. But I will drive you about and
show you the place."

"An American woman who respects herself," said Mrs. Westgate, turning to
Beaumont with her bright expository air, "must buy something every day
of her life. If she can not do it herself, she must send out some
member of her family for the purpose. So Bessie goes forth to fulfill my
mission."

The young girl had walked away, with Lord Lambeth by her side, to whom
she was talking still; and Percy Beaumont watched them as they passed
toward the house. "She fulfills her own mission," he presently said;
"that of being a very attractive young lady."

"I don't know that I should say very attractive," Mrs. Westgate
rejoined. "She is not so much that as she is charming when you really
know her. She is very shy."

"Oh, indeed!" said Percy Beaumont.

"Extremely shy," Mrs. Westgate repeated. "But she is a dear good girl;
she is a charming species of girl. She is not in the least a flirt; that
isn't at all her line; she doesn't know the alphabet of that sort of
thing. She is very simple, very serious. She has lived a great deal in
Boston, with another sister of mine--the eldest of us--who married a
Bostonian. She is very cultivated, not at all like me; I am not in the
least cultivated. She has studied immensely and read everything; she is
what they call in Boston 'thoughtful.'"

"A rum sort of girl for Lambeth to get hold of!" his lordship's kinsman
privately reflected.

"I really believe," Mrs. Westgate continued, "that the most charming
girl in the world is a Boston superstructure upon a New York fonds; or
perhaps a New York superstructure upon a Boston fonds. At any rate, it's
the mixture," said Mrs. Westgate, who continued to give Percy Beaumont a
great deal of information.

Lord Lambeth got into a little basket phaeton with Bessie Alden, and she
drove him down the long avenue, wh