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274 the open doorway. She gathered indeed from his being there a positive advantage, the full confidence of which was already in her charming tone. "Oh, Captain Yule, I'm delighted to meet you! It's such a comfort to ask you if I may!"

His surprise kept him an instant dumb, but the effort not too closely to betray it appeared in his persuasive inflection. "If you 'may,' madam?"

"Why, just be here, don't you know? and poke round!" She presented such a course as almost vulgarly natural. "Don't tell me I can't now, because I already have: I've been upstairs and downstairs and in my lady's chamber—I won't answer for it even perhaps that I've not been in my lord's! I got round your lovely servant—if you don't look out I'll grab him. If you don't look out, you know, I'll grab everything." She gave fair notice and went on with amazing serenity; she gathered positive gaiety from his frank stupefaction. "That's what I came over for—just to lay your country waste. Your house is a wild old dream; and besides"—she dropped, oddly and quaintly, into real responsible judgment—"you've got some quite good things. Oh, yes, you have—several: don't coyly pretend you haven't!" Her familiarity