It’s pure nature.’’

‘‘I should think you would have a few little benches— rustic seats and that sort of thing. It might be so jolly to sit here, you know,’’ Lord Lambeth went on.

‘‘I am afraid we haven’t so many of those things as you,’’ said the young girl thoughtfully.

‘‘I daresay you go in for pure nature, as you were saying. Nature over here must be so grand, you know.’’ And Lord Lambeth looked about him.

The little coast line hereabouts was very pretty, but it was not at all grand, and Miss Alden appeared to rise to a perception of this fact. ‘‘I am afraid it seems to you very rough,’’ she said. ‘‘It’s not like the coast scenery in Kingsley’s novels.’’

‘‘Ah, the novels always overdo it, you know,’’ Lord Lambeth rejoined. ‘‘You must not go by the novels.’’

They were wandering about a little on the rocks, and they stopped and looked down into a narrow chasm where the rising tide made a curious bellowing sound. It was loud enough to prevent their hearing each other, and they stood there for some moments in silence. The young girl looked at her companion, observing him attentively, but covertly, as women, even when very young, know how to do. Lord Lambeth repaid observation; tall, straight, and strong, he was handsome as certain young Englishmen, and certain young Englishmen almost alone, are handsome; with a perfect finish of feature and a look of intellectual repose and gentle good temper which seemed somehow to be consequent upon his well-cut nose and chin. And to speak of Lord Lambeth’s expression of intellectual repose is not simply a civil way of saying that he looked stupid. He was evidently not a young man of an irritable imagination; he was not, as he would himself have said, tremendously clever; but though there was a kind of appealing dullness in his eye, he looked thoroughly reasonable and competent, and his appearance proclaimed that to be a nobleman, an athlete, and an excellent fellow was a sufficiently brilliant combination of qualities. The young girl beside him, it may be attested without further delay, thought him the handsomest young man she had ever seen; and Bessie Alden’s imagination, unlike that of her companion, was irritable. He, however, was also making up his mind that she was uncommonly pretty.

‘‘I daresay it’s very gay here, that you have lots of balls and parties,’’ he said; for, if he was not tremendously clever, he rather prided himself on having, with women, a sufficiency of conversation.

‘‘Oh, yes, there is a great deal going on,’’ Bessie Alden replied. ‘‘There are not so many balls, but there are a good many other things. You will see for yourself; we live rather in the midst of it.’’

‘‘It’s very kind of you to say that. But I thought you Americans were always dancing.’’

‘‘I suppose we dance a good deal; but I have never seen much of it. We don’t do it much, at any rate, in summer. And I am sure,’’ said Bessie Alden, ‘‘that we don’t have so many balls as you have in England.’’

‘‘Really!’’ exclaimed Lord Lambeth. ‘‘Ah, in England it all depends, you know.’’

‘‘You will not think much of our gaieties,’’ said the young girl, looking at him with a little mixture of interrogation and decision which was peculiar to her. The interrogation seemed earnest and the decision seemed arch; but the mixture, at any rate, was charming. ‘‘Those 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.