“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 took these flying leaps, and she alighted, as her victim must have phrased it to himself, without turning a hair. “Don’t you _know_ you have? Just look at that!” She thrust her enamel before him, but he took it and held it so blankly, with an attention so absorbed in the mere woman, that at the sight of his manner her zeal for his interest and her pity for his detachment again flashed out. “Don’t you know _anything_? Why, it’s Limoges!” Clement Yule simply broke into a laugh--though his laugh indeed was comprehensive. “It seems absurd, but I’m not in the least acquainted with my house. I’ve never happened to see it.” She seized his arm. “Then do let me show it to you!” “I shall be delighted.” His laughter had redoubled in a way that spoke of his previous tension; yet his tone, as he saw Chivers return breathless from the front, showed that he had responded sincerely enough to desire a clear field. “Who in the world’s there?” The old man was full of it. “A party!” “A party?” Chivers confessed to the worst. “Over from Gossage--to see the house.” The worst, however, clearly, was quite good enough for their companion, who embraced the incident with sudden enthusiasm. “Oh, let _me_ show it!” But before either of the men could reply she had, addressing herself to Chivers, one of those droll drops that betrayed the quickness of her wit and the freedom of her fancy. “Dear me, I forgot--_you_ get the tips! But, you dear old creature,” she went on, “I’ll get them, too, and I’ll simply make them over to you.” She again pressed Yule--pressed him into this service. “Perhaps they’ll be bigger--for me!” He continued to be highly amused. “I should think they’d be enormous--for you! But I _should_ like,” he added with more concentration--“I should like extremely, you know, to go over with you alone.” She was held a moment. “Just you and me?” “Just you and me--as you kindly proposed.” She stood reminded; but, throwing it off, she had her first inconsequence. “That must be for after----!” “Ah, but not too late.” He looked at his watch. “I go back tonight.” “Laws, sir!” Chivers irrepressibly groaned.