But at this moment Cora, pausing half-way up, sent down another entreaty. “Mrs. Gracedew, will you see _me_?” The charming woman looked at her watch. “In ten minutes,” she smiled back. Mr. Prodmore, bland and assured, looked at his own. “You could put him through in five--but I’ll allow you twenty. There!” he decisively cried to his daughter, whom he quickly rejoined and hustled on her course. Mrs. Gracedew kissed after her a hand of vague comfort. IV The silence that reigned between the pair might have been registered as embarrassing had it lasted a trifle longer. Yule had continued to turn his back, but he faced about, though he was distinctly grave, in time to avert an awkwardness. “How do you come to know so much about my house?” She was as distinctly not grave. “How do _you_ come to know so little?” “It’s not my fault,” he said very gently. “A particular combination of misfortunes has forbidden me, till this hour, to come within a mile of it.” These words evidently struck her as so exactly the right ones to proceed from the lawful heir that such a felicity of misery could only quicken her interest. He was plainly as good in his way as the old butler--the particular combination of misfortunes corresponded to the lifelong service. Her interest, none the less, in its turn, could only quicken her pity, and all her emotions, we have already seen, found prompt enough expression. What could any expression do indeed now but mark the romantic reality? “Why, you poor thing!”--she came toward him on the weary road. “Now that you’ve got here I hope at least you’ll stay.” Their intercourse must pitch itself--so far as she was concerned--in some key that would make up for things. “Do make yourself comfortable. Don’t mind me.” Yule looked a shade less serious. “That’s exactly what I wanted to say to _you_!” She was struck with the way it came in. “Well, if you _had_ been haughty, I shouldn’t have been quite crushed, should I?” The young man’s gravity, at this, completely yielded. “I’m never haughty--oh, no!” She seemed even more amused. “Fortunately then, as _I’m_ never crushed. I don’t think,” she added, “that I’m really as crushable as you.” The smile with which he received this failed to conceal completely that it was something of a home thrust. “Aren’t we really _all_ crushable--by the right thing?” She considered a little. “Don’t you mean rather by the wrong?” He had got, clearly, a trifle more accustomed to her being extraordinary. “Are you sure we always know them apart?” She weighed the responsibility. “I always do. Don’t you?” “Not quite every time!” “Oh,” she replied, “I don’t think, thank goodness, we have positively ‘every time’ to distinguish.” “Yet we must always act,” he objected. She turned this over; then with her wonderful living look, “I’m glad to hear it,” she exclaimed, “because, I fear, I always _do_! You’ll certainly think,” she added with more gravity, “that I’ve taken a line today!”