Couldn’t the young man be induced to go on? “Oh no,” said this informant very freely; “he wouldn’t be able to get the young ladies to attend to him now.” There was something very friendly, Beaumont saw, in the attitude of the company; they looked at their new recruits with an air of animated sympathy and interest; they smiled, brightly and unanimously, at everything that dropped from either. Lord Lambeth and his companion felt they were indeed made cordially welcome. Mrs. Westgate seated herself between them, and while she talked continuously to each they had occasion to observe that she came up to their friend Littledale’s promise. She was thirty years old, with the eyes and the smile of a girl of seventeen, and was light and graceful—elegant, exquisite. Mrs. Westgate was, further, what she had occasion to describe some person, among her many winged words, as being, all spontaneity. Frank and demonstrative, she appeared always—while she looked at you delightedly with her beautiful young eyes—to be making sudden confessions and concessions, breaking out after momentary wonders. “We shall expect to see a great deal of you,” she said to Lord Lambeth with her bland intensity. “We’re very fond of Englishmen here; that is, there are a great many we’ve been fond of. After a day or two you must come and stay with us; we hope you’ll stay a nice long while. Newport’s quite attractive when you come really to know it, when you know plenty of people. Of course you and Mr. Beaumont will have no difficulty about that. Englishmen are very well received here; there are almost always two or three of them about. I think they always like it, and I must say I should think they would. They receive particular attention—I must say I think they sometimes get spoiled; but I’m sure you and Mr. Beaumont are proof against that. My husband tells me you’re friends of Captain Littledale’s; he was such a charming man. He made himself so agreeable here that I wonder he didn’t stay. That would have carried out his system. It couldn’t have been pleasanter for him in his own country. Though I suppose it’s very pleasant in England too—for English people. I don’t know myself; I’ve been there very little. I’ve been a great deal abroad, but I always cling to the Continent. I must say I’m extremely fond of Paris; you know we Americans always are; we go there when we die. Did you ever hear that before?—it was said by a great wit. I mean the good Americans; but we’re all good—you’ll see that for yourself. All I know of England is London, and all I know of London is that place—on that little corner, you know—where you buy jackets, jackets with that coarse braid and those big buttons. They make very good jackets in London, I’ll do you the justice to say that. And some people like the hats. But about the hats I was always a heretic; I always got my hats in Paris. You can’t wear an English hat—at least, I never could—unless you dress