当前语言版本的摘要正文暂未提供，现显示英文版本。
“I must see whose!” And Chivers hurried out.
Left alone, she stood with happy possession oddly mingled with desperate surrender, examining a small framed plaque of enamel with hungry tenderness. “Why, bless me if it isn’t Limoges! I wish awfully I were a bad woman: then I’d just quietly take it!” On hearing a sound behind her, she started like a guilty thing—but, recovering, kept the object familiarly in her hand as she turned to the gentleman who had stopped in the open doorway. Captain Yule, coming in from the garden.
“Oh, Captain Yule, I’m delighted to meet you! It’s such a comfort to ask you if I may!”
His surprise kept him dumb a moment. “If you ‘may,’ madam?”
“Just be here and poke round! Don’t tell me I can’t now, because I already have! I got round your lovely servant—if you don’t look out I’ll grab him. If you don’t look out, I’ll grab everything.” She gave him fair notice with amazing serenity. “That’s what I came over for—just to lay your country waste. Your house is a wild old dream; and you’ve got some quite good things. Don’t coyly pretend you haven’t!” She thrust her enamel before him, but he held it blankly, his attention absorbed in the woman. “Don’t you know anything? Why, it’s Limoges!”
Yule broke into a comprehensive laugh. “It seems absurd, but I’m not in the least acquainted with my house.”
She seized his arm. “Then do let me show it to you!”
“I shall be delighted.” His tone, as Chivers returned breathless from the front, showed he desired a clear field. “Who in the world’s there?”
“A party! Over from Gossage—to see the house.”
The lady embraced the incident. “Oh, let me show it!” But addressing Chivers, she dropped into drollery. “Dear me, I forgot—you get the tips! But I can get them too, and I’ll simply make them over to you. Perhaps they’ll be bigger—for me!”
Yule was highly amused. “I should think they’d be enormous—for you! But I should like to go over with you alone.”
“Just you and me?”
“Just you and me—as you kindly proposed.”
She stood reminded; but, throwing it off: “That must be for after!”
“Ah, but not too late. I go back tonight.”
“Laws, sir!” Chivers groaned.
“You want to keep him?” the stranger asked. Yule turned away at the question, but she found herself instantly answered. “Then I’ll help you.”
“Shall I show them straight in, sir?” Chivers appealed.
“By all means—if there’s money in it!” This was jocose, but the old man’s departing step held new hope. The lady had exerted an influence.
She continued to exert one. “Oh, and I promised to show it to Miss Prodmore! Won’t you call her?”
The coldness of his response made it none. “‘Call’ her? Dear lady, I don’t know her!”
The original text of this work is in the public domain. This page focuses on a guided summary article, reading notes, selected quotes, and visual learning materials for educational purposes.