第20章

"She leaves them in America!" said Percy Beaumont.

On the departure of their visitors, Bessie Alden told her sister that Lord Lambeth would come the next day, to go with them to the Tower, and that he had kindly offered to bring his "trap" and drive them thither.

Mrs. Westgate listened in silence to this communication, and for some time afterward she said nothing. But at last, "If you had not requested me the other day not to mention it,"she began, "there is something I should venture to ask you."Bessie frowned a little; her dark blue eyes were more dark than blue.

But her sister went on. "As it is, I will take the risk.

You are not in love with Lord Lambeth: I believe it, perfectly.

Very good. But is there, by chance, any danger of your becoming so?

It's a very simple question; don't take offense. I have a particular reason," said Mrs. Westgate, "for wanting to know."Bessie Alden for some moments said nothing; she only looked displeased.

"No; there is no danger," she answered at last, curtly.

"Then I should like to frighten them," declared Mrs. Westgate, clasping her jeweled hands.

"To frighten whom?"

"All these people; Lord Lambeth's family and friends.""How should you frighten them?" asked the young girl.

"It wouldn't be I--it would be you. It would frighten them to think that you should absorb his lordship's young affections."Bessie Alden, with her clear eyes still overshadowed by her dark brows, continued to interrogate. "Why should that frighten them?"Mrs. Westgate poised her answer with a smile before delivering it.

"Because they think you are not good enough. You are a charming girl, beautiful and amiable, intelligent and clever, and as bien-elevee as it is possible to be; but you are not a fit match for Lord Lambeth."Bessie Alden was decidedly disgusted. "Where do you get such extraordinary ideas?" she asked. "You have said some such strange things lately.

My dear Kitty, where do you collect them?"Kitty was evidently enamored of her idea. "Yes, it would put them on pins and needles, and it wouldn't hurt you.

Mr. Beaumont is already most uneasy; I could soon see that."The young girl meditated a moment. "Do you mean that they spy upon him--that they interfere with him?"

"I don't know what power they have to interfere, but I know that a British mama may worry her son's life out."It has been intimated that, as regards certain disagreeable things, Bessie Alden had a fund of skepticism. She abstained on the present occasion from expressing disbelief, for she wished not to irritate her sister.

But she said to herself that Kitty had been misinformed--that this was a traveler's tale. Though she was a girl of a lively imagination, there could in the nature of things be, to her sense, no reality in the idea of her belonging to a vulgar category. What she said aloud was, "I must say that in that case I am very sorry for Lord Lambeth."Mrs. Westgate, more and more exhilarated by her scheme, was smiling at her again. "If I could only believe it was safe!" she exclaimed.

"When you begin to pity him, I, on my side, am afraid.""Afraid of what?"

"Of your pitying him too much."

Bessie Alden turned away impatiently; but at the end of a minute she turned back. "What if I should pity him too much?" she asked.

Mrs. Westgate hereupon turned away, but after a moment's reflection she also faced her sister again. "It would come, after all, to the same thing," she said.

Lord Lambeth came the next day with his trap, and the two ladies, attended by Willie Woodley, placed themselves under his guidance, and were conveyed eastward, through some of the duskier portions of the metropolis, to the great turreted donjon which overlooks the London shipping. They all descended from their vehicle and entered the famous inclosure; and they secured the services of a venerable beefeater, who, though there were many other claimants for legendary information, made a fine exclusive party of them and marched them through courts and corridors, through armories and prisons.

He delivered his usual peripatetic discourse, and they stopped and stared, and peeped and stooped, according to the official admonitions.

Bessie Alden asked the old man in the crimson doublet a great many questions; she thought it a most fascinating place.

Lord Lambeth was in high good humor; he was constantly laughing;he enjoyed what he would have called the lark. Willie Woodley kept looking at the ceilings and tapping the walls with the knuckle of a pearl-gray glove; and Mrs. Westgate, asking at frequent intervals to be allowed to sit down and wait till they came back, was as frequently informed that they would never come back.

To a great many of Bessie's questions--chiefly on collateral points of English history--the ancient warder was naturally unable to reply; whereupon she always appealed to Lord Lambeth.

But his lordship was very ignorant. He declared that he knew nothing about that sort of thing, and he seemed greatly diverted at being treated as an authority.

"You can't expect everyone to know as much as you," he said.

"I should expect you to know a great deal more," declared Bessie Alden.

"Women always know more than men about names and dates and that sort of thing," Lord Lambeth rejoined.

"There was Lady Jane Grey we have just been hearing about, who went in for Latin and Greek and all the learning of her age.""YOU have no right to be ignorant, at all events," said Bessie.

"Why haven't I as good a right as anyone else?""Because you have lived in the midst of all these things.""What things do you mean? Axes, and blocks, and thumbscrews?""All these historical things. You belong to a historical family.""Bessie is really too historical," said Mrs. Westgate, catching a word of this dialogue.