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 and was accompanied by a regretful but firm refusal of admission to the patient.

“Madame is so désolée not to receive you, ma’amselle, but she ’ave ze malady too strr-rong for speak even with her dearest friend,” was the ultimatum which sent Miss Hanbury from the door with a doleful face, which somehow took quite a different expression when she had turned the corner.

For some mysterious reason her aloofness from her lover vanished that morning, and she and Forsyth were on the best of terms. They spent two hours together wandering in the park, where in one of the more remote glades Azimoolah flitted up to them from the bushes, and, regarding Sybil with awe-struck veneration, made a deep salaam and was gone. The Duke, who had given his word of honor to the General not to go beyond the park gates, passed the time partly with his bailiff and partly strolling with Leonie in the gardens and glass-houses. The friendship between Beaumanoir and his beautiful guest, so promisingly begun on board the St. Paul, seemed to have lost ground. Though he was much in her society, he avoided intimate topics, and often puzzled her with a hastily averted look