The effect of her new acquaintance on his companion had been such that she could, after an instant, react against this sentence. “Well, when I told her that this particular day perhaps wouldn’t, she said it would just _have_ to.” “Have to do?” Mr. Prodmore showed again, through a chink, his speculative eye. “For _what_, then, with such grand airs?” “Why, I suppose, for what Americans want.” He measured the quantity. “They want everything.” “Then I wonder,” said Cora, “that she hasn’t arrived.” “When she does arrive,” he answered, “I’ll tackle her; and I shall thank you, in future, not to take up, in trains, with indelicate women of whom you know nothing.” “Oh, I did know something,” his daughter pleaded; “for I saw her yesterday at Bellborough.” Mr. Prodmore contested even this freedom. “And what was she doing at Bellborough?” “Staying at the Blue Dragon, to see the old abbey. She says she just loves old abbeys. It seems to be the same feeling,” the girl went on, “that brought her over, today, to see this old house.” “She ‘just loves’ old houses? Then why the deuce didn’t she accompany you properly, since she is so pushing, to the door?” “Because she went off in a fly,” Cora explained, “to see, first, the old hospital. She just loves old hospitals. She asked me if this isn’t a show-house. I told her”--the girl was anxious to disclaim responsibility--“that I hadn’t the least idea.” “It _is_!” Mr. Prodmore cried almost with ferocity. “I wonder, on such a speech, what she thought of _you_!” Miss Prodmore meditated with distinct humbleness. “I know. She told me.” He had looked her up and down. “That you’re really a hopeless frump?” Cora, oddly enough, seemed almost to court this description. “That I’m not, as she rather funnily called it, a show-girl.” “Think of your having to be reminded--by the very strangers you pick up,” Mr. Prodmore groaned, “of what my daughter should pre-eminently be! Your friend, all the same,” he bethought himself, “is evidently loud.” “Well, when she comes,” the girl again so far agreed as to reply, “you’ll certainly hear her. But don’t judge her, papa, till you do. She’s tremendously clever,” she risked--“there seems to be nothing she doesn’t know.” “And there seems to be nothing you do! You’re _not_ tremendously clever,” Mr. Prodmore pursued; “so you’ll permit me to demand of you a slight effort of intelligence.” Then, as for the benefit of the listening walls themselves, he struck the high note. “I’m expecting Captain Yule.” Cora’s consciousness blinked. “The owner of this property?” Her father’s tone showed his reserves. “That’s what it depends on you to make him!” “On me?” the girl gasped. “He came into it three months ago by the death of his great-uncle, who had lived to ninety-three, but who, having quarrelled mortally with his father, had always refused to receive either sire or son.”