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 and he made them, oddly enough, much more cordially than the women-folk.

“Pleasant thing, a short parting,” he ejaculated, as he bent over the fair American’s jeweled hand. “We shall meet in a day or two at Prior’s Tarrant, eh?”

Mrs. Talmage Eglinton smiled sweetly up at the rugged face of the veteran man-hunter.

“Come, General, you can’t expect me to give myself away like that,” she said. “I shan’t make up my mind until I get the invitation. You might be a bad, bold dissembler, you know, just taking a rise out of me; and then what a fool I should look if I had said that I was going to stay with the Duke.”

“I might be a dissembler, but you couldn’t look a fool—under any circumstances,” replied the General gallantly, as he turned away.

Mrs. Talmage Eglinton stood watching the erect figure march down the corridor, and suddenly called after him:

“When does the Duke himself go into the country, General?”

The erect figure wheeled as on a pivot, and the answer came back without a second’s pause.

“To-night, by the 8.45 from St. Pancras. Alec Forsyth goes down with him.”