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 us their company, it would lend color to my own presence. The last two-named, as you have occasion to know, form a valuable bodyguard.”

The Duke stared at his visitor with something like horrified amazement.

“You forget, General, in your kind eagerness to serve me, that you have guests staying in your own house whom you cannot desert,” he said, wondering how even an old man with his years behind him could suffer such lapse of memory when Leonie Sherman was one of the guests. He was almost angry that his visitor, being thus reminded, did not instantly abase himself.

But instead of shame General Sadgrove had only justification to offer—not profuse, because that was not his way—but complete.

“I had not forgotten the Shermans,” he replied, in a tone of oddly contrasted reproof and apology. “I had it in my mind that if you entertained my view you would stretch a point, and make matters easy for me by inviting my guests as well.” And the shrewd old diplomatist succeeded in looking as though the barefaced bait he was dangling was a piece of