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“You must, then—she’s wonderful.” At her look, Cora Prodmore presented herself in the doorway of the morning-room. “See? She’s charming!” The girl dashed across the open as if under heavy fire, but the extremity of exposure was promptly embodied in her friend’s public embrace. “Miss Prodmore, let me present Captain Yule. Captain Yule, Miss Prodmore. Miss Prodmore, Captain Yule.”
There was stiffness in such notice as either party took. “Papa, let me ‘present’ you to Mrs. Gracedew. Mrs. Gracedew, Mr. Prodmore. Mr. Prodmore, Mrs. Gracedew.”
Mrs. Gracedew pronounced him, sparing him nothing. “So happy to meet your daughter’s father. Your daughter’s so perfect a specimen.”
Prodmore seized the perch held out. “So perfect a specimen, yes!”
“So fresh, so quaint, so droll!” She kept Cora in the middle.
Prodmore gave Yule the advantage. “So fresh, so quaint, so droll!”
But Chivers’s return made the moment a circumstance. He preceded several plain provincial sightseers, drawing them up in a broken line with suppressed pulls. “This, ladies and gentlemen, is perhaps the most important feature—the grand old feudal, baronial ’all. Being from all accounts the most ancient portion of the edifice, it was erected in the very earliest ages.” He paused, then coughed. “Some do say—in the course of the fifteenth century.”
Mrs. Gracedew pounced on him with affection. “I say in the fourteenth, my dear—you’re robbing us of a hundred years!”
He yielded without a struggle. “I do seem in them dark old centuries sometimes to trip a little.” His audience, gaping, moved nearer. “The Gothic roof is much admired, but the west gallery is a modern addition.”
“What in the name of Methuselah do you call ‘modern’?” Mrs. Gracedew interposed. “It was here at the visit of James the First, in 1611. The great fireplace is Jacobean.”
She took him up with wondrous benignant authority, plunging into the old book, and he could only assent with grateful obeisances. “The tapestry on the left Italian—the elegant wood-work Flemish.”
“Excuse me if I just deprecate a misconception. The elegant wood-work Italian—the tapestry on the left Flemish.” She put it to him before them all, looking now for sympathy. “Do you really mind if I just do it? Oh, I know how: I can do quite beautifully the housekeeper last week at Castle Gaunt.” She addressed the company. “How do you do? Ain’t it thrilling? Keep well together, please—I’ve my duty to all parties.”
The contingent from Gossage had its spokesman—a very erect little personage in a new suit and green necktie, with a long face and upstanding hair. “How many parties, now, can you manage?”
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