All the bustle of "settling down" in the hotel over, Annesley Beecher began to reflect a little on the singularity of his situation.

The wondering admiration which had followed Lizzy Davis wherever she appeared on the journey seemed to have reached its climax now, and little knots and groups of lounging travellers were to be seen before the windows, curious to catch a glance at this surpassing beauty. Now, had she been his _bona fide_ property, he was just the man to derive the most intense enjoyment from this homage at second hand; he 'd have exulted and triumphed in it. His position was, however, a very different one, and, as merely her companion, while it exposed her to very depreciating judgments, it also necessitated on his part a degree of haughty defiance and championship for which he had not the slightest fancy whatever.

Annesley Beecher dragged into a row for Grog Davis's daughter, Beecher fighting some confounded Count or other about Lizzy Davis, Annesley shot by some Zouave Captain who insisted on waltzing with his "friend,"--these were pleasant mind-pictures which he contemplated with the very reverse of enjoyment; and yet the question of her father's station away, he felt it was a cause wherein even one who had no more love for the "duello" than himself might well have perilled life. All her loveliness and grace had not been wasted when they could kindle up a little gleam of chivalry in the embers of that wasted heart!

He ran over in his mind all the Lady Julias and Georginasof the fashionable world. He bethought him of each of those who had been the queens of London seasons, and yet how vastly were they all her inferiors! It was not alone that in beauty she eclipsed them, but she possessed, besides, the thousand nameless attractions of manner and gesture, a certain blended dignity and youthful gayety that made her seem the very ideal of high-born loveliness. He had seen dukes'

daughters who could not vie with her in these gifts; he had known countesses immeasurably beneath her. From these thoughts he went on to others as to her future, and the kind of fellow that might marry her; for, strangely enough, in all his homage there mingled the ever-present memory of Grog and his pursuits. Mountjoy Stubbs might marry her; he has fifty thousand a year, and his father was a pawnbroker. Lockwood Harris might marry her; he got all his money from the slave trade. There were three or four more,--all wealthy, and all equivocal in position: men to be seen in clubs, to be dined with and played with; fellows who had yachts at Cowes and grouse-lodges in Scotland, and yet in London were "nowhere." These men could within their own sphere do all they pleased,--they could afford any extravagance they fancied; and what a delightful extravagance it would be to marry Lizzy Davis! Often as he had envied these men, he never did so more than now. _They_ had no responsibilities of station ever hanging over them; no brothers in the Peerage to bully them about this; no sisters in waiting to worry them about that. They could always, as he phrased it, "paint their coach their own color," without any fear of the Herald's Office; and what better existence could a man wish for than a prolific fancy and unlimited funds to indulge it. "If I were Stubbs, I 'd marry her." This he said fully a dozen times over, and even confirmed it with an oath.

And what an amiable race of people are the Stubbses of this habitable globe! how loosely do responsibilities sit upon them! how generously are they permitted every measure of extravagance and every violation of good taste! What a painful contrast did his mind draw between Stubbs'

condition and his own! There was a time, too, when the State repaired in some sort the injustice that younger sons groaned under,--the public service was full of the Lord Charleses and the Honorables, who looked up to a paternal Government for their support; but now there was actually a run against them. Beecher argued himself so warmly into this belief, that he said aloud, "If I asked for something to-morrow, they 'd refuse me, just because I 've a brother a Peer!"

The reader is already aware what a compensation he found for all his defeats and shortcomings in life by arraigning the injustice of the world. Downing Street, the turf, Lackington, Tattersall's, the Horse Guards, and "the little hell in St. James's Street" were all in a league to crush him; but he'd show them "a turn round the corner yet," he said; and with a saucy laugh of derision at all the malevolence of fortune, he set about dressing for dinner. Beecher was not only a very good-looking fellow, but he had that stamp of man of fashion on him which all the contamination of low habits and low associates had not effaced. His address was easy and unaffected, his voice pleasantly toned, his smile sufficiently ready; and his whole manner was an agreeable blending of deference with a sort of not ungraceful self-esteem. Negatives best describe the class of men he belonged to, and any real excellence he possessed was in not being a great number of things which form, unhappily, the social defects of a large section of humanity. He was never loud, never witty, never oracular, never anecdotic; and although the slang of the turf and its followers clung to him, he threw out its "dialectics" so laughingly that he even seemed to be himself ridiculing the quaint phraseology he employed.

We cannot venture to affirm that our readers might have liked his company, but we are safe in asserting that Lizzy Davis did so. He possessed that very experience of life--London life--that amused her greatly. She caught up with an instinctive quickness the meaning of those secret springs which move society, and where, though genius and wealth are suffered to exercise their influence, the real power is alone centred in those who are great by station and hereditary claims. She saw that the great Brahmins of fashion maintained a certain exclusiveness which no pretensions ever breached, and that to this consciousness of an unassailable position was greatly owing all the dignified repose and serenity of their manner. She made him recount to her the style of living in the country houses of England,--the crowds of visitors that came and went, the field-sports, the home resources that filled up the day, while intrigues of politics or fashion went silently on beneath the surface. She recognized that in this apparently easy and indolent existence a great game was ever being played, and that all the workings of ambition, all the passions of love and hate and fear and jealousy "were on the board."

They had dined sumptuously. The equivocal position in which they appeared, far from detracting from the deference of the hotel people, served but to increase their homage. Experience had shown that such persons as they were supposed to be spent most and paid best, and so they were served on the most splendid plate; waiters in full dress attended them; even to the bouquet of hothouse flowers left on "Mademoiselle's" napkin, all were little evidences of that consideration of which Annesley Beecher well knew the meaning.

"Will you please to enlighten my ignorance on one point, Mr. Beecher?"

said she, as they sat over their coffee. "Is it customary in this rigid England, of which you have told me so many things, for a young unmarried lady to travel alone with a gentleman who is not even a relative?"

"When her father so orders it, I don't see that there can be much wrong in it," said he, with some hesitation.

"That is not exactly an answer to my question; although I may gather from it that the proceeding is, at least, unusual."

"I won't say it's quite customary," said Beecher; "but taking into account that I am a very old and intimate friend of your father's--"

"There must, then, have been some very pressing emergency to make papa adopt such a course," interrupted she.

"Why so?" asked he. "Is the arrangement so very distasteful to you?"

"Perhaps not; perhaps I like it very well. Perhaps I find you very agreeable, very amusing, very--What shall I say?"

"Respectful."

"If you like that epithet, I have no objection to put it in your character. Yet still do I come back to the thought that papa could scarcely have struck out this plan without some grave necessity. Now, I should like much to know what that is, or was." Beecher made no sign of reply, and she quickly asked, "Do you know his reasons?"

"Yes," said he, gravely; "but I prefer that you should not question me about them."

"I can't help that, Mr. Beecher," said she, in that half-careless tone she sometimes used. "Just listen to me for one moment," said she, earnestly, and fixing her eyes fully on him,--"just hear me attentively.

From what I have gathered from your account of England and its habits, I am certainly now doing that which, to say the least, is most unusual and unwarrantable. Now, either there is a reason so grave for this that it makes a choice of evils imperative,--and, therefore, I ought to have my choice,--or there is another even worse interpretation--at least, a more painful one--to come."

"Which is?" cried he.

"That I am not of that station to which such propriety attaches of necessity."

She uttered these words with a cold sternness and determination that actually made Beecher tremble. "It was Davis's daughter spoke there,"

thought he. "They are the words of one who declares that, no matter what be the odds against her, she is ready to meet the whole world in arms.

What a girl it is!" muttered he, with a sense of mingled fear and admiration.

"Well, Mr. Beecher," said she, at length, "I _do_ think you owe me a little frankness; short as our acquaintance has been, I, at least, have talked in all the freedom of old friendship. Pray show me that I have not been indiscreet."

"Hang me, if I know what to say or do!" cried Beecher, in dire perplexity. "If I were to tell you why your father hurried away from Brussels, _he_ 'd bring me to book very soon, I promise you."

"I do not ask that," interrupted she, eagerly. "It is upon the other point my interest is most engaged." He looked blankly at her, for he really did not catch to what she alluded. "I want you to tell me, in one word, who are the Davises? Who are we? If we are not recognizable by that high world you have told me of, who, then, are our equals? Remember that by an honest answer to my question you give guidance and direction to my future life. Do not shrink from fear of giving me pain,--there is no such pain as uncertainty; so be frank."

Beecher covered his face with his hands to think over his reply. He did not dare to look at her, so fearful was he of her reading his very embarrassment.

"I will spare you, sir," said she, smiling half superciliously; "but if you bad known me a little longer or a little better, you had seen how needless all this excessive caution on your part I have more of what you call 'pluck' than you give me credit for."

"No, by Jove! that you have n't," cried Beecher; "you have more real courage than all the men I ever knew."

"Show me, then, that you are not deficient in the quality, and give me a plain answer to a plain question. Who are we?"

"I have just told you," said Beecher, whose confusion now made him stammer and stutter at every word,--"I have just told you that your father never spoke to me about his relations. I really don't know his county, nor anything about his family."

"Then it only remains to ask, What are we? or, in easier words, Has my father any calling or profession? Come, sir, so much you can certainly tell me."

"Your father was a captain in a West India regiment, and, when I met him first, he was a man about town,--went to all the races, made his bets, won and lost, like the rest of us; always popular,--knew everybody."

"A 'sporting character,' in short,--is n't that the name newspapers give it?" said she, with a malicious twinkle of the eye.

"By Jove! how you hit a thing off at once!" exclaimed Beecher, in honest ecstasy at her shrewdness.

"So, then, I am at the end of the riddle at last," said she, musingly, as she arose and walked the room in deep meditation. "Far better to have told me so many a year ago; far better to have let me conform to this station when I might have done so easily and without a pang!" A bitter sigh escaped her at the last word, and Beecher arose and joined her.

"I hope you are not displeased with me, my dear Miss Davis," said he, with a trembling voice; "I don't know what I'd not rather suffer than offend you."

"You have _not_ offended me," said she, coldly.

"Well, I mean, than I 'd pain you,--than I 'd say anything that should distress you. You know, after all, it was n't quite fair to push me so hard."

"Are you forgetting, sir," broke she in, haughtily, "that you have really told me next to nothing, and that I am left to gather from mere insinuations that there is something in our condition your delicacy shrinks from explaining?"

"Not a bit of it," chimed he in, quickly. "The best men in England are on the turf, and a good book on the Oaks is n't within reach of the income-tax. Your father's dealings are with all the swells in the Peerage."

"So there is a partnership in the business, sir," said she, with a quiet irony; "and is the Honorable Mr. Beecher one of the company?"

"Well--ha--I suppose--I ought to say yes," muttered he, in deep confusion. "We do a stroke of work together now and then--on the square, of course, I mean."

"Pray don't expose the secrets of the firm, sir. I am even more interested than yourself that they should be conducted with discretion.

There is only one other question I have to ask; and as it purely concerns myself, you 'll not refuse me a reply. Knowing our station in life, as I now see you know it, by what presumption did you dare to trifle with my girlish ignorance, and lead me to fancy that I might yet move in a sphere which in your heart you knew I was excluded from?"

Overwhelmed with shame and confusion, and stunned by the embarrassment of a dull man in a difficulty, Beecher stood, unable to utter a word.

"To say the least, sir, there was levity in this," said she, in a tone of sorrowful meaning; "but, perhaps, you never meant it so."

"Never, upon my oath, never!" cried he, eagerly. "Whatever I said, I uttered in all frankness and sincerity. I know London town just as well as any man living, and I 'll stand five hundred to fifty there's not your equal in it,--and that's giving the whole field against the odds.

All I say is, you shall go to the Queen's Drawing-room--"

"I am not likely to do so, sir," said she, with a haughty gesture, and left the room.