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THE SEMI-DETACHED HOUSE.
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CHAPTER VIII.

"What a woman!" was all the comment Blanche made on the Baroness, "but I should like to know what she has heard from Berlin—should not you Aileen? It must have been something about Arthur, because she implied that our stay at Pleasance would be prolonged. What could it be?"

"I dare say," said Aileen, laughing, "my imagination will not go so far as yours has gone, she probably meant to intimate to us, simple rustics, that she was in all the political secrets of the Berlin negotiation. I should not wonder if the Baron were a stock-jobber, whatever that may be; but those sort of people always know, or pretend to know the