They were wandering about a little on the rocks, and they stopped
and looked down into a narrow chasm where the rising tide made
a curious bellowing sound. It was loud enough to prevent their
hearing each other, and they stood there for some moments in silence.
The young girl looked at her companion, observing him attentively,
but covertly, as women, even when very young, know how to do.
Lord Lambeth repaid observation; tall, straight, and strong,
he was handsome as certain young Englishmen, and certain young
Englishmen almost alone, are handsome; with a perfect finish
of feature and a look of intellectual repose and gentle good temper
which seemed somehow to be consequent upon his well-cut nose and chin.
And to speak of Lord Lambeth's expression of intellectual repose
is not simply a civil way of saying that he looked stupid.
He was evidently not a young man of an irritable imagination;
he was not, as he would himself have said, tremendously clever;
but though there was a kind of appealing dullness in his eye,
he looked thoroughly reasonable and competent, and his appearance
proclaimed that to be a nobleman, an athlete, and an excellent
fellow was a sufficiently brilliant combination of qualities.
The young girl beside him, it may be attested without further delay,
thought him the handsomest young man she had ever seen;
and Bessie Alden's imagination, unlike that of her companion,
was irritable. He, however, was also making up his mind that she
was uncommonly pretty.

"I daresay it's very gay here, that you have lots of balls and parties,"
he said; for, if he was not tremendously clever, he rather prided himself
on having, with women, a sufficiency of conversation.

"Oh, yes, there is a great deal going on," Bessie Alden replied.