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the following Sunday morning the Duke of Beaumanoir stood at one of the windows of the long library at Prior’s Tarrant, idly beating a tattoo on the glass. The June sunshine flooded the bosky leafage of the glorious expanse of park, and nearer still the parterres of the old Dutch garden were gay with summer bloom; but the beauties of the landscape were lost upon the watcher at the window.

Nearly four and twenty hours had elapsed since he had failed to keep his appointment with Mr. Ziegler, and he was wondering how and when that autocrat of high-grade crime would signalize his displeasure at the mutiny. That sooner or later an edict would issue against him from the invalid chair in the first-floor suite he had not the slightest doubt. He knew that he had to deal with men playing a great game for a great stake in deadly earnest.

The Dukes of Beaumanoir had never been