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 slight advantage, “you would never have got Beaumanoir to assent to Mrs. Talmage Eglinton being asked here if he had known her to be a professional criminal. The ‘honor of the house,’ as he calls it, is undoubtedly the motive of his inexplicable silence. He would hardly compromise that august sentiment, for which he is apparently willing to die, by desecrating Prior’s Tarrant with the presence of a woman likely to figure in the police-courts—a woman, too, who, if your theory is correct, has designs against the father of the girl for whom I veritably believe he has more than a passing regard.”

The General, secretly in danger of losing his temper—a thing he never really did—concealed his emotion by affecting to ruminate. The thought of his invitation to the dashing American, afterwards carelessly endorsed by the Duke, restored his equanimity.

“That was a neat touch,” he remarked meditatively as he selected a cigar from his case. “If his Grace is not cold meat, I’d give a good deal to be living under the same roof with him and Mrs. Talmage Eglinton for a few days, with the prospect of Senator Sherman’s arrival at the end of them.”