Hadn’t he compassed the satisfaction, that high aim of young men greatly placed and greatly moneyed, of being liked for himself? It was true a cynical counsellor might have whispered to him: “Liked for yourself? Ah, not so very awfully _much_!” He had at any rate the constant hope of adding to that quantity. It may not seem to fit in—but the truth was strange—that Bessie Alden, when he struck her as “deficient,” found herself aspiring by that very reason to some finer way of liking him. This was fairly indeed on grounds of conscience—because she felt he had been thoroughly “nice” to her sister and so deemed it no more than fair that she should think as well of him as he thought of her. The effort in question was possibly sometimes not so successful as it might have been, the result being at moments an irritation, which, though consciously vague, was yet, with inconsequence, acute enough to express itself in hostile criticism of several British institutions. Bessie went to entertainments at which she met Lord Lambeth, but also to others at which he was neither actually nor imaginably present; and it was chiefly at these latter that she encountered those literary and artistic celebrities of whom mention has been made. After a while she reduced the matter to a principle. If he should appear anywhere she might take it for a flat sign that there would be neither poets nor philosophers; and as a result—for it was almost a direct result—she used to enumerate to the young man these objects of her admiration. “You seem to be awfully fond of that sort of people,” he said one day as if the idea had just occurred to him. “They’re the people in England I’m most curious to see,” she promptly replied. “I suppose that’s because you’ve read so much,” Lord Lambeth gallantly threw off. “I’ve _not_ read so much. It’s because we think so much of them at home.” “Oh I see! In your so awfully clever Boston.” “Not only in our awfully clever Boston, but in our just commonly clever everywhere. We hold them in great honour,” said Bessie. “It’s they who go to the best dinner-parties.” “I daresay you’re right. I can’t say I know many of them.” “It’s a pity you don’t,” she returned. “It would do you some good.” “I daresay it would,” said the young man very humbly. “But I must say I don’t like the looks of some of them.” “Neither do I—of some of them. But there are all kinds, and many of them are charming.” “I’ve talked with two or three of them,” Lord Lambeth went on, “and I thought they had a kind of fawning manner.” “Why should they fawn?” Bessie demanded. “I’m sure I don’t know. Why indeed?” “Perhaps you only thought so,” she suggested. “Well, of course,” her companion allowed, “that’s a kind of thing that can’t be proved.” “In America they don’t fawn,” she went on. “Don’t they? Ah, well, then they must be better company.”