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was on Sunday evening that Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, after a pious pilgrimage to the village church in company with her assiduous friend Sybil Hanbury, sought the Duke and asked if she might have a carriage to take her to the station for the up-train on the following morning. She would return in the evening, she said, but imperative business with her milliner and tailor demanded her presence in London for a few hours.

Beaumanoir, in courteously promising that her request should be attended to, regarded her with a wan smile. “You will have a companion—that is, if you do not mind Mr. Forsyth sharing the station brougham with you,” he added. “Alec has to go to London to-morrow on my business—leases at the solicitors’, isn’t it?”

He turned for confirmation to Forsyth, who, with General Sadgrove, had been strolling with him on the terrace.