"Oh, I say ripping!" was the critic's comment. "I say, mayn't the
others come and see?" The others came, including Mabel, who
stood awkwardly behind the rest, and looked over Jimmy's
shoulder.
"I say, you are clever," said Gerald respectfully.
"To what good to have the talent, when one must pass one's life at
teaching the infants?" said Mademoiselle.
"It must be fairly beastly," Gerald owned.
"You, too, see the design?" Mademoiselle asked Mabel, adding: "A
friend from the town, yes?"
"How do you do?" said Mabel politely. "No, I'm not from the town.
I live at Yalding Towers."
The name seemed to impress Mademoiselle very much. Gerald
anxiously hoped in his own mind that she was not a snob.
"Yalding Towers," she repeated, "but this is very extraordinary. Is
it possible that you are then of the family of Lord Yalding?"
"He hasn't any family," said Mabel; "he's not married."
"I would say are you how you say? cousin sister niece?"
"No," said Mabel, flushing hotly, "I'm nothing grand at all. I'm
Lord Yalding's housekeeper's niece."
"But you know Lord Yalding, is it not?"
"No," said Mabel, "I've never seen him."
"He comes then never to his chateau?"
"Not since I've lived there. But he's coming next week."
"Why lives he not there?" Mademoiselle asked.
"Auntie says he's too poor," said Mabel, and proceeded to tell the
tale as she had heard it in the housekeeper's room: how Lord
Yalding's uncle had left all the money he could leave away from
Lord Yalding to Lord Yalding's second cousin, and poor Lord
Yalding had only just enough to keep the old place in repair, and
to live very quietly indeed somewhere else, but not enough to keep
the house open or to live there; and how he couldn't sell the house
because it was "in tale .
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