Chivers surrounded this description of Miss Prodmore with the deep discretion of silence, and then, after a moment, evidently reflected that silence, in a world bestrewn with traps to irreverence, might be as rash as speech. “Were they coming--a--together, sir?” He had scarcely mended the matter, for his visitor gave an inconsequent stare. “Together?--for what do you take Miss Prodmore?” This young lady’s parent glared about him again as if to alight on something else that was out of place; but the good intentions expressed in the attitude of every object might presently have been presumed to soothe his irritation. It had at any rate the effect of bridging, for poor Chivers, some of his gaps. “It _is_ in a sense true that their ‘coming together,’ as you call it, is exactly what I’ve made my plans for today: my calculation was that we should all punctually converge on this spot. Attended by her trusty maid, Miss Prodmore, who happens to be on a week’s visit to her grandmother at Bellborough, was to take the 1.40 from that place. I was to drive over--ten miles--from the most convenient of my seats. Captain Yule”--the speaker wound up his statement as with the mention of the last touch in a masterpiece of his own sketching--“was finally to shake off for a few hours the peculiar occupations that engage him.” The old man listened with his head askance to favour his good ear, but his visible attention all on a sad spot in one of the half-dozen worn rugs. “They _must_ be peculiar, sir, when a gentleman comes into a property like this and goes three months without so much as a nat’ral curiosity----! I don’t speak of anything but what _is_ nat’ral, sir; but there have _been_ people here----” “There have repeatedly been people here!” Mr. Prodmore complacently interrupted. “As you say, sir--to be shown over. With the master himself never shown!” Chivers dismally commented. “He _shall_ be, so that nobody can miss him!” Mr. Prodmore, for his own reassurance as well, hastened to retort. His companion risked a tiny explanation. “It will be a mercy indeed to look on him; but I meant that he has not been taken round.” “That’s what I meant too. _I’ll_ take him--round and round: it’s exactly what I’ve come for!” Mr. Prodmore rang out; and his eyes made the lower circuit again, looking as pleased as such a pair of eyes could look with nobody as yet quite good enough either to terrify or to tickle. “He can’t fail to be affected, though he _has_ been up to his neck in such a different class of thing.” Chivers clearly wondered awhile what class of thing it could be. Then he expressed a timid hope. “In nothing, I dare say, but what’s right, sir----?”