Page:The Duke Decides (1904).djvu/54

 famous for their virtues, any more than they had been cowards, and it was rather a dawning sense of responsibility than fear, either for his reputation or his person, that filled him with apprehension. If “anything happened” to him, such a lot would happen to so many other people. For instance, it had only occurred to him since he came down to the country that if Ziegler killed him his death would mean ruin to Alec Forsyth, who had thrown up a sure position to serve him. The next heir was an elderly cousin with a large family to provide for, and he would certainly not retain Forsyth in his employment.

Then, again, Beaumanoir reflected with a sigh, his new and sweet friendship with Leonie Sherman—a friendship to which no blot on his escutcheon need now put limits—would be rudely snapped. The King of Terrors would take away what his saved honor had restored, and perhaps it was the bitterest drop in his cup to feel that he might be giving his life to lose what in another sense he would have given his life to win. To ask Leonie to link her fate to his, with that dark shadow hanging over him, was out of the question.

Once he had taken up his pen to denounce