"That's a great pity," said Beaumont.

"You would find it all set

forth there so much better than I can do it."

"He is a Peer, then?"

"Oh yes, he is a Peer."

"And has he any other title than Lord Lambeth?”

"His title is the Marquis of Lambeth," said Beaumont; and then he was silent; Bessie Alden appeared to be looking at him with interest. "He is the son of the Duke of Bayswater," he added, presently.

"The eldest son?"

"The only son."

"And are his parents living?"

"Oh yes; if his father were not living he would be a duke."

"So that when his father dies," pursued Bessie Alden, with more simplicity than might have been expected in a clever girl, "he will become Duke of Bayswater?"

"Of course," said Percy Beaumont. "But his father is in excellent health."

"And his mother?"

Beaumont smiled a little.

"And has he any sisters?"

"Yes, there are two."

"The Duchess is uncommonly robust."

"And what are they called?"

"One of them is married. She is the Countess of Pimlico.” "And the other?"

"The other is unmarried; she is plain Lady Julia."

Bessie Alden looked at hin a moment. "Is she very plain?"

Beaumont began to laugh again. "You would not find her so handsome as her brother,' he said; and it was after this that he attempted to dissuade the heir of the Duke of Bayswater from accepting Mrs. Westgate's invitation. "Depend upon it," he said, "that girl

means to try for you."

"It seems to me you are doing your best to make a fool of me," the modest young nobleman answered.

"She has been asking me," said Beaumont, "all about your people and your possessions."

"I am sure it is very good of her!" Lord Lambeth rejoined.

"Well, then," observed his companion, "if you go, you go with your eyes open."

"Damn my eyes!" exclaimed Lord Lambeth. "If one is to be a dozen times a day at the house, it is a great deal more convenient to sleep there. I am sick of travelling up and down this beastly Avenue."

Since he had determined to go, Percy Beaumont would of course have been very sorry to allow him to go alone; he was a man of conscience, and he remembered his promise to the Duchess. It was obviously the memory of this promise that made him say to his com

panion a couple of days later, that he rather wondered he should be so fond of that girl.

"In the first place, how do you know how fond I am of her?" asked Lord Lambeth. "And in the second place why shouldn't I be fond of her?" "I shouldn't think she would be in your line."

"What do you call my line?' You don't set her down as 'fast?' "Exactly so. Mrs. Westgate tells me that there is no such thing as the 'fast girl' in America; that it's an English invention, and that the term has no meaning here."

"All the better. It's an animal I detest."

"You prefer a blue-stocking."

"Is that what you call Miss Alden?"

"Her sister tells me," said Percy Beaumont, "that she is tremendously literary."

"I don't know anything about that. She is certainly very clever." "Well," said Beaumont, "I should have supposed you would have found that sort of thing awfully slow."

"In point of fact," Lord Lambeth rejoined, "I find it uncommonly lively."

After this, Percy Beaumont held his tongue; but on August 10th he wrote to the Duchess of Bayswater. He was, as I have said, a man of conscience, and he had a strong, incorruptible sense of the proprieties of life. His kinsman, meanwhile, was having a great deal of talk with Bessie Alden—on the red sea-rocks beyond the lawn; in the course of long island rides, with a slow return in the glowing twilight; on the deep verandah, late in the evening. Lord Lambeth, who had stayed at many houses, had never stayed at a house in which it was possible for a young man to converse so frequently with a young lady. This young lady no longer applied to Percy Beaumont for information concerning his lordship. She addressed herself directly to the young nobleman. She asked him a great many questions, some of which bored him a little; for he took no pleasure in talking about himself.

“Lord Lambeth," said Bessie Alden, "are you an hereditary legislator?"

"Oh, I say," cried Lord Lambeth, "don't make me call myself such names as that."

“But you are a member of Parliament," said the young girl.

"I don't like the sound of that, either."

"Doesn't your father sit in the House of Lords?" Bessie Alden went on.

"Very seldom," said Lord Lambeth.

"Is it an important position?" she asked.

"Oh dear no," said Lord Lambeth.

"I should think it would be very grand," said Bessie Alden, "to possess, simply by an accident of birth, the right to make laws for a great nation."

"Ah, but one doesn't make laws. It's a great humbug."

"I don't believe that," the young girl declared. "It must be a great privilege, and I should think that if one thought of it in the right way from a high point of view-it would be very inspiring."

"The less one thinks of it the better," Lord Lambeth affirmed.

"I think it's tremendous," said Bessie Alden; and on another occasion she asked him if he had any tenantry. Hereupon it was that, as I have said, he was a little bored.

"Do you want to buy up their leases?" he asked.
"Well-have you got any livings?" she demanded.
"Oh, I say!" he cried.

"Have you got a clergyman that is looking out?" But she made him tell her that he had a Castle; he confessed to but one. It was the place in which he had been born and brought up, and, as he had an old-time liking for it, he was beguiled into describing it a little and saying it was really very jolly. Bessie Alden listened with great interest, and declared that she would give the world to see such a place. Whereupon-"It would be awfully kind of you to come and stay there," said Lord Lambeth. He took a vague satisfaction in the circumstance that Percy Beaumont had not heard him make the remark I have just recorded.

Mr. Westgate, all this time, had not, as they said at Newport," come on." His wife more than once announced that she expected him on the morrow; but on the morrow she wandered about a little, with a telegram in her jewelled fingers, declaring it was very tiresome that his business detained him in New York; that he could only hope the Englishmen were having a good time. "I must say," said Mrs. Westgate, "that it is no thanks to him if you are!" And she went on to explain, while she continued that slow-paced promenade which enabled her well-adjusted skirts to display themselves so advantageously, that unfortunately in America there was no leisure-class. It was Lord Lambeth's theory, freely propounded when the young men were together, that Percy Beaumont was having a very good time with Mrs. Westgate, and that under the pretext of meeting for the purpose of animated discussion, they were indulging in practices that imparted a shade of hypocrisy to the lady's regret for her husband's absence.

"I assure you we are always discussing and differing," said Percy Beaumont. "She is awfully argumentative. American ladies certainly don't mind contradicting you. Upon my word I don't think I was ever treated so by a woman before. She's so devilish positive."

Mrs. Westgate's positive quality, however, evidently had its attrac tions; for Beaumont was constantly at his hostess's side. He detached himself one day to the extent of going to New York to talk over the Tennessee Central with Mr. Westgate; but he was absent only forty-eight hours, during which, with Mr. Westgate's assistance, he completely settled this piece of business. They certainly do things quickly in New York," he observed to his cousin; and he added that Mr. West

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gate had seemed very uneasy lest his wife should miss her visitor-he had been in such an awful hurry to send him back to her. "I'm afraid you'll never come up to an American husband-if that's what the wives expect," he said to Lord Lambeth.

Mrs. Westgate, however, was not to enjoy much longer the entertainment with which an indulgent husband had desired to keep her provided. On August 21st Lord Lambeth received a telegram from his mother, requesting him to return immediately to England; his father had been taken ill, and it was his filial duty to come to him.

The young Englishman was visibly annoyed. "What the deuce does it mean?" he asked of his kinsman. "What am I to do?"

Percy Beaumont was annoyed as well; he had deemed it his duty, as I have narrated, to write to the Duchess, but he had not expected that this distinguished woman would act so promptly upon his hint. "It means," he said, "that your father is laid up. I don't suppose it's anything serious; but you have no option. Take the first steamer; but don't be alarmed."

Lord Lambeth made his farewells; but the few last words that he exchanged with Bessie Alden are the only ones that have a place in our record. "Of course I needn't assure you," he said, " that if you should come to England next year, I expect to be the first person that you inform of it."

Bessie Alden looked at him a little and she smiled. "Oh, if we come to London," she answered, "I should think you would hear of it." Percy Beaumont returned with his cousin, and his sense of duty compelled him, one windless afternoon, in mid-Atlantic, to say to Lord Lambeth that he suspected that the Duchess's telegram was in part the result of something he himself had written to her. "I wrote to her—-as I explicitly notified you I had promised to do that you were extremely interested in a little American girl."

Lord Lambeth was extremely angry, and he indulged for some moments in the simple language of indignation. But I have said that he was a reasonable young man, and I can give no better proof of it than the fact that he remarked to his companion at the end of half an hour-" You were quite right after all. I am very much interested in her. Only, to be fair," he added, "you should have told my mother also that she is not-seriously-interested in me."

Percy Beaumont gave a little laugh. "There is nothing so charming as modesty in a young man in your position. That speech is a capital proof that you are sweet on her."

"She is not interested-she is not!" Lord Lambeth repeated.
"My dear fellow," said his companion, "you are very far gone."

HENRY JAMES, JUN.

714

The Sun's Long Streamers.

PROFESSOR CLEVELAND ABBE, an American astronomer and meteorologist, who had intended to observe the eclipse of the sun last July from the summit of Pike's Peak, in Colorado, more than 14,000 feet above the sea-level, fell ill after he had reached that place, and was carried down to the Lake House (elevation 10,000 feet), there to remain while the rest of his party stayed to view the eclipse from the summit. Probably if he had remained with them his observations would have differed in no very marked degree from those which other astronomers made on that occasion. He would have devoted a few seconds, perhaps, to the study of the sun's corona with the naked eye. He would probably have made some telescopic, spectroscopic, or polariscopic observations during the rest of the three minutes during which the total eclipse lasted, and possibly he might have noted some feature rather more effectively and satisfactorily than most of the other observers. But under the actual circumstances he could not hope thus to take his place among the thousands of observers who have noted the phenomena of total solar eclipses. He had no optical or other instrument. Worse than all, he is near-sighted; and though he had a pair of spectacles, it was not quite strong enough to correct his near-sightedness.

Yet Professor Abbe succeeded in making observations far exceeding in interest any which were made by the entire force of eclipse observers in 1874 and 1875, and fairly comparable in this respect with the most remarkable discoveries effected during the great eclipses of 1868, 1869, 1870, and 1871. Debarred from instrumental researches, unable to do what most observers of eclipses seem anxious to do-namely, to see everything that can be seen-he was compelled to restrict himself to precisely that line of observation which we indicated eight years ago as likely to be most instructive. He gave his whole attention to the corona, and especially to its outlying and feebler portions. Studying the phenomena with the naked eye, or at least with only spectacles to aid him, he could recognise faint luminosity which the telescope would inevitably have concealed from his view. He was not hurried; nor was he disturbed by the thought that such and such instruments must be attended to in turn while still totality lasted, with care also that in the darkness nothing should be disturbed or injured. As he said after the observations were completed, and as we pointed out in 1870, "a glance of a few seconds will no more suffice to do justice to the delicate phenomena [of the corona] than it would suffice to enable a naturalist to draw