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 doing the honors of a big shoot in the home coverts to a party of neighboring country gentlemen. Sybil, who had been sitting in a low chair by the hearth, rose and drew him to the blaze, first relieving him of his gun.

“I won’t light the lamp yet, dear,” she said. “I am forced to refer to the forbidden subject, and you may want to blush.”

“Forbidden subject?” said Forsyth, not for the moment comprehending.

“Well, of course you haven’t taken to forbidding me anything yet; perhaps ‘tacitly avoided’ would be a better phrase,” the young wife replied, perching herself on the arm of her husband’s chair. “I refer to that poor creature whose one redeeming point was, as the dear General put it on that eventful night, an unselfish attachment to your noble self.”

Forsyth had never been able to bring himself to talk of the reason of his uncle’s confidence in his safety in the crypt that night, when he had lent himself to a ruse which he had believed meant death if he was recognized. He had loathed “Mrs. Talmage Eglinton’s” obtrusive admiration long before he had entered the lists against her, and it was from a knowledge of his feelings that the General had