"
"Does he object to trespassers?"
"Not if they are respectable and take no liberties."
"I am respectable, and I shall not take liberties," said Miss
Vanderpoel, with a touch of hauteur. The truth was that she had spent a
sufficient number of years on the Continent to have become familiar with
conventions which led her not to approve wholly of his bearing. Perhaps
he had lived long enough in America to forget such conventions and to
lack something which centuries of custom had decided should belong
to his class. A certain suggestion of rough force in the man rather
attracted her, and her slight distaste for his manner arose from the
realisation that a gentleman's servant who did not address his superiors
as was required by custom was not doing his work in a finished way. In
his place she knew her own demeanour would have been finished.
"If you are sure that Lord Mount Dunstan would not object to my walking
about, I should like very much to see the gardens and the house," she
said. "If you show them to me, shall I be interfering with your duties?"
"No," he answered, and then for the first time rather glumly added,
"miss."
"I am interested," she said, as they crossed the grass together,
"because places like this are quite new to me.
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