Lady Barbarina, The Siege of London, An International Episode, and Other TalesJames, Henry
General
Lady Barbarina, The Siege of London, An International Episode, and Other Tales
James, Henry
England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Europe -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
themselves, when all was said, a good deal struck with that. It was also
represented to the strangers that it mattered very little whether their
hotel was agreeable, as every one would want them to “visit round,” as
somebody called it: they would stay with other people and in any case
would be constantly at Mrs. Westgate’s. They would find that charming;
it was the pleasantest house in Newport. It was only a pity Mr. Westgate
was never there—he being a tremendously fine man, one of the finest they
had. He worked like a horse and left his wife to play the social part.
Well, she played it all right, if that was all he wanted. He liked her
to enjoy herself, and she did know how. She was highly cultivated and a
splendid converser—the sort of converser people would come miles to hear.
But some preferred her sister, who was in a different style altogether.
Some even thought her prettier, but decidedly Miss Alden wasn’t so smart.
She was more in the Boston style—the quiet Boston; she had lived a great
deal there and was very highly educated. Boston girls, it was intimated,
were more on the English model.
Lord Lambeth had presently a chance to test the truth of this last
proposition; for, the company rising in compliance with a suggestion from
their hostess that they should walk down to the rocks and look at the
sea, the young Englishman again found himself, as they strolled across
the grass, in proximity to Mrs. Westgate’s sister. Though Miss Alden was
but a girl of twenty she appeared conscious of the weight of
expectation—unless she quite wantonly took on duties she might have let
alone; and this was perhaps the more to be noticed as she seemed by habit
rather grave and backward, perhaps even proud, with little of the other’s
free fraternising. She might have been thought too deadly thin, not to
say also too deadly pale; but while she moved over the grass, her arms
hanging at her sides, and, seriously or absently, forgot expectations,
though again brightly to remember them and to look at the summer sea, as
if that was what she really cared for, her companion judged her at least
as pretty as Mrs. Westgate and reflected that if this was the Boston
style, “the quiet Boston,” it would do very well. He could fancy her
very clever, highly educated and all the rest of it; but clearly also
there were ways in which she could spare a fellow—could ease him; she
wouldn’t keep him so long on the stretch at once. For all her
cleverness, moreover, he felt she had to think a little what to say; she
didn’t say the first thing that came into her head: he had come from a
different part of the world, from a different society, and she was trying
to adapt her conversation. The others were scattered about the rocks;
Mrs. Westgate had charge of Percy Beaumont.
“Very jolly place for this sort of thing,” Lord Lambeth said. “It must
do beautifully to sit.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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