“Well, my dear,” Mrs. Westgate pursued to Bessie, “I hope you’re getting some ideas for your couturière?” “I’m getting plenty of ideas,” said Bessie, “but I don’t know that my couturière would particularly appreciate them.” Their companion presently perceived a mounted friend who drew up beside the barrier of the Row and beckoned to him. He went forward and the crowd of pedestrians closed about him, so that for some minutes he was hidden from sight. At last he reappeared, bringing a gentleman with him—a gentleman whom Bessie at first supposed to be his friend dismounted. But at a second glance she found herself looking at Lord Lambeth, who was shaking hands with her sister. “I found him over there,” said Willie Woodley, “and I told him you were here.” And then Lord Lambeth, raising his hat afresh, shook hands with Bessie—“Fancy your being here!” He was blushing and smiling; he looked very handsome and he had a note of splendour he had not had in America. The girl’s free fancy, as we know, was just then in marked exercise; so that the tall young Englishman, as he stood there looking down at her, had the benefit of it. “He’s handsomer and more splendid than anything I’ve ever seen,” she said to herself. And then she remembered he was a Marquis and she thought he somehow looked a Marquis. “Really, you know,” he cried, “you ought to have let a fellow know you’ve come!” “I wrote to you an hour ago,” said Mrs. Westgate. “Doesn’t all the world know it?” smiled Bessie. “I assure you I didn’t know it!” he insisted. “Upon my honour I hadn’t heard of it. Ask Woodley now; had I, Woodley?” “Well, I think you’re rather a humbug,” this gentleman brought forth. “You don’t believe that—do you, Miss Alden?” asked his lordship. “You don’t believe I’m rather a humbug, eh?” “No,” said Bessie after an instant, but choosing and conferring a grace on the literal—“I don’t.” “You’re too tall to stand up, Lord Lambeth,” Mrs. Westgate pronounced. “You approach the normal only when you sit down. Be so good as to get a chair.” He found one and placed it sidewise, close to the two ladies. “If I hadn’t met Woodley I should never have found you,” he went on. “Should I, Woodley?” “Well, I guess not,” said the young American. “Not even with my letter?” asked Mrs. Westgate. “Ah, well, I haven’t got your letter yet; I suppose I shall get it this evening. It was awfully kind of you to write.” “So I said to Bessie,” the elder lady observed. “_Did_ she say so, Miss Alden?” Lord Lambeth a little pointlessly inquired. “I daresay you’ve been here a month.” “We’ve been here three,” mocked Mrs. Westgate. “_Have_ you been here three months?” the young man asked again of Bessie. “It seems a long time,” Bessie answered. He had but a brief wonder—he found something. “I say, after that you had better not call me a humbug! I’ve only been in town three weeks, but you must have been hiding away. I haven’t seen you anywhere.”