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230 pursue your adventures quite into the night—to return to Bellborough as you came?"

The girl had by this time begun a little to find her feet. "Exactly as I came, papa dear,—under the protection of a new friend I've just made, a lady whom I met in the train and who is also going back by the 6.19. She was, like myself, on her way to this place, and I expected to find her here."

Mr. Prodmore chilled on the spot any such expectations. "What does she want at this place?"

Cora was clearly stronger for her new friend than for herself. "She wants to see it."

Mr. Prodmore reflected on this complication. "Today?" It was practically presumptuous. "Today won't do."

"So I suggested," the girl declared. "But do you know what she said?"

"How should I know," he coldly demanded, "what a nobody says?"

But on this, as if with the returning taste of a new strength, his daughter could categorically meet him. "She's not a nobody. She's an American."

Mr. Prodmore, for a moment, was struck: he embraced the place, instinctively, in a flash of calculation. "An American?"