"Oh!" said Mabel; "then you're the American millionaire."
"I do not like the description, young lady," said Mr. Jefferson D.
Conway. "I am an American citizen, and I am not without means.
This is a fine property a very fine property. If it were for sale ,"
"It isn't, it can't be," Mabel hastened to explain. "The lawyers have put it in a tale, so Lord Yalding can't sell it. But you could take it to live in, and pay Lord Yalding a good millionairish rent, and then he could marry the French governess "
"Shish!" said Kathleen and Mr. Jefferson D. Conway together, and he added: "Lead the way, please; and I should suggest that the exploration be complete and exhaustive."
Thus encouraged, Mabel led the millionaire through all the castle.
He seemed pleased, yet disappointed too.
"It is a fine mansion," he said at last when they had come back to the point from which they had started; "but I should suppose, in a house this size, there would mostly be a secret stairway, or a priests hiding place, or a ghost?"
"There are," said Mabel briefly, "but I thought Americans didn't believe in anything but machinery and newspapers." She touched the spring of the panel behind her, and displayed the little tottery staircase to the American. The sight of it worked a wonderful transformation in him. He became eager, alert, very keen.
"Say!" he cried, over and over again, standing in the door that led from the powdering-room to the state bed-chamber. "But this is great great!"
The hopes of everyone ran high. It seemed almost certain that the castle would be let for a millionairish rent and Lord Yalding be made affluent to the point of marriage.
"If there were a ghost located in this ancestral pile, I'd close with the Earl of Yalding today, now, on the nail," Mr. Jefferson D. Conway went on.