She was extremely brilliant and a splendid talker.
Some people preferred her sister; but Miss Alden was very different;
she was in a different style altogether. Some people even
thought her prettier, and, certainly, she was not so sharp.
She was more in the Boston style; she had lived a great deal
in Boston, and she was very highly educated. Boston girls,
it was propounded, were more like English young ladies.

Lord Lambeth had presently a chance to test the truth of this proposition,
for on 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 she was but a girl of twenty,
she appeared to feel the obligation to exert an active hospitality; and this
was, perhaps, the more to be noticed as she seemed by nature a reserved
and retiring person, and had little of her sister's fraternizing quality.
She was perhaps rather too thin, and she was a little pale; but as she moved
slowly over the grass, with her arms hanging at her sides, looking gravely
for a moment at the sea and then brightly, for all her gravity, at him,
Lord Lambeth thought her at least as pretty as Mrs. Westgate, and reflected
that if this was the Boston style the Boston style was very charming.
He thought she looked very clever; he could imagine that she was
highly educated; but at the same time she seemed gentle and graceful.
For all her cleverness, however, he felt that 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 and from a different society,
and she was trying to adapt her conversation. The others were scattering
themselves near the rocks; Mrs. Westgate had charge of Percy Beaumont.

"Very jolly place, isn't it?" said Lord Lambeth.