"Lord Silverbridge," said Mr. Boncassen, speaking a little through his nose, "I am proud to make your acquaintance, sir. Your father is a man for whom we in our country have a great respect. I think, sir, you must be proud of such a father."
"Oh yes,--no doubt," said Silverbridge awkwardly. Then Mr. Boncassen continued his discourse with the gentlemen around him. Upon this our friend turned to the young lady. "Have you been long in England, Miss Boncassen?"
"Long enough to have heard about you and your father," she said, speaking with no slightest twang.
"I hope you have not heard any evil of me."
"I'm sure you can't have heard much good."
"Do you suppose we don't interest ourselves about the Derby in New York? Why, when we arrived at Queenstown I was leaning over the taffrail so that I might ask the first man on board the tender whether the Prime Minister had won."
"I can't conceive why you of all men should call your horse by such a name. If my father had been President of the United States, I don't think I'd call a horse President."
"I'd have changed it. But is it not very impudent in me to be finding fault with you the first time I have ever seen you? Shall you have a horse at Ascot?"
"There will be something going, I suppose. Nothing that I care about." Lord Silverbridge had made up his mind that he would go to no races with Tifto before the Leger. The Leger would be an affair of such moment as to demand his presence. After that should come the complete rupture between him and Tifto.
Then there was a movement among the elders, and Lord Silverbridge soon found himself walking alone with Miss Boncassen. It seemed to her to be quite natural to do so, and there certainly was no reason why he should decline anything so pleasant. It was thus that he had intended to walk with Mabel Grex;--only as yet he had not found her. "Oh yes," said Miss Boncassen, when they had been together about twenty minutes; "we shall be here all the summer, and all the fall, and all the winter. Indeed father means to read every book in the British Museum before he goes back."
"He reads by steam, and he has two or three young men with him to take it all down and make other books out of it;--just as you'll see a lady take a lace shawl and turn it all about till she has trimmed a petticoat with it. It is the same lace all through,--and so I tell father it's the same knowledge."