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THE EUROPEANS.
[CH.
answered Felix, laughing, "were a thousand years old."
"I am—sometimes," said the Baroness.
"I will go, then, and announce to our cousins the arrival of a personage so extraordinary. They will immediately come and pay you their respects."
Eugenia paced the length of the room again, and then she stopped before her brother, laying her hand upon his arm. "They are not to come and see me," she said. "You are not to allow that. That is not the way I shall meet them first." And in answer to his interrogative glance she went on. "You will go and examine, and report. You will come back and tell me who they are and what they are; their