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358 " But Mr. Prodmore dropped the bolder thought. "It will depend on what he calls me."

Mrs. Gracedew covered him a moment with the largeness of her charity. "Won't it depend a little on what your daughter herself calls him?"

Mr. Prodmore seriously considered. "No. That," he declared with delicacy, "will be between the happy pair."

"Am I to take it from you then—I adopt your excellent phrase," Mrs. Gracedew said—"that Miss Prodmore has already accepted him?"

Her companion, with his head still in the air, seemed to signify that he simply put it down on the table and that she could take it or not as she liked. "Her character—formed by my assiduous care—enables me to locate her, I may say even to time her, from moment to moment." His massive watch, as he opened it, further sustained him in this process. "It's my assured conviction that she's accepting him while we stand here."

Mrs. Gracedew was so affected by his assured conviction that, with an odd, inarticulate sound, she forbore to stand longer—she rapidly moved away, taking one of the brief excursions of step and sense that had been for her, from the first, under the noble roof, so many dumb but decisive