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 had gone upstairs again after coming down into the hall. Well, he would hold her to the lunch invitation; let her think that she had hoodwinked him; and endeavor to ascertain whether she was courting his society as a mere bluff to lend color to her deception, or with some other object as yet undefined.

He had not long to wait for her. Tripping lightly down the stairs, she joined him with a charming assumption that he would be interested to hear that her jewels were “quite safe,” and she supplemented the information with the request that they should not lunch in the hotel.

“I am known here, and people stare so,” she said. “Take me somewhere where we can be quiet. I have got something to say.”

“Very well,” he replied. “Come over to Kettner’s. There won’t be much of a crowd there at this time of day.” And he strove hard to be polite as he steered her across the Strand, though he could have wished himself back at the Foreign Office, with no prospects and no Duke to serve, if Sybil’s brave young face had not been in his mind’s eye.

At the restaurant Mrs. Talmage Eglinton chose a table in a remote corner of the dining