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 “I trust that your headache is better,” said Forsyth, politely.

But the headache, he was assured, was rather worse than better. The sufferer averred that she had slipped out an hour before, to go for a quiet walk in the meadows in the hope of obtaining relief; but the remedy had been of no avail, and all that remained was to go back to bed.

“Won’t you walk back with me?” Mrs. Talmage Eglinton added, devouring the young Scotsman’s healthy, good-looking face with eyes of invitation. “I don’t seem ever to get you alone nowadays.”

“I am very sorry, but I have to go a little further,” replied Forsyth, and, raising his hat, he passed on. But it was a very little way further that he had to go, for at the end of the first meadow he turned and followed in the lady’s wake back to the mansion, catching, as he did so, a glimpse of Azimoolah moving stealthily in the bushes at the side of the path.

That night the post-bag which one of the Prior’s Tarrant grooms conveyed to the office in the village contained a letter addressed to “Clinton Ziegler, Esqre.,” at the Hotel Cecil, couched thus: