The man Benzon, who had kept his gaze fixed on the face of Cora Lestrade, removed it now, and, with a cool politeness that struck an unaccountable chill to most of his hearers, thanked the General for enlightening him on "a point of considerable importance," and begged permission to depart if he was really not to be detained. At a sign from his master Azimoolah stood aside, and the man swung himself out of the window, gained a foothold on the ivy stems, and was gone. When they had all turned away from the darkling face framed for a moment among the creepers, it was seen that she who had loomed so largely in their lives of late as "Mr. Clinton Ziegler" and "Mrs. Talmage Eglinton" was swaying and about to fall.
"Thank you," she said, recovering herself with a painful effort as Senator Sherman, who happened to be nearest, came to her assistance. "It was only a passing weakness, but I shall be glad if I may go to my room."
And with a flicker of the old impudence she mimicked General Sadgrove:
"Even the worst of 'em is capable of feeling shaken on hearing sentence of death pronounced," adding, with a swift change of manner, "and that is what I have heard in this room to-night."
But in the morning, when, with the Frenchwoman Rosa, she took her departure by a train leaving so early that none of the house-party were visible, it was observed by the servants that Mrs. Talmage Eglinton was in the highest spirits, and, if possible, more stylishly appareled than usual. And Mr. Manson, the butler, looking regretfully after the station brougham as it drove away, murmured benedictions, having palmed the largest tip that had come his way in a quarter of a century.
"A thorough lady," he sighed, as he closed the hall door and went in to preside at the breakfast sideboard. "Pity she was called away unexpected."
[CHAPTER XXI—The Honor of the House]
The Treasury bonds had reached their goal in the vaults of the Bank of England, and Senator Sherman, having duly discharged his duty to his Republic, was speeding back to his wife and daughter at Prior's Tarrant, with, as he quaintly phrased it, "a considerable load off his chest." In the reserved compartment with him were the Duke of Beaumanoir and General Sadgrove, who had insisted on forming an escort.
The Duke, who had been buoyed up with excitement till the bonds were safe in the bank, had fallen into dejection on the return journey. His two companions persisted in treating him as a hero, whereas he guessed that they were both aware of the true state of the case. He knew that one of them was, for he had himself, under threat of information being given to the police, confessed everything to the General after the latter's visit to the hotel on the day of "Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's" supposed confinement to her room; and, at any rate, the Senator must have heard something of the truth, or he would not have been prepared the night before to confound Cora Lestrade's correct accusation with a generous but entirely erroneous construction of his complicity.
All this made Beaumanoir miserable and ill at ease, the more so that he had three times attempted, without success, to terminate his false position. The two gentlemen had evidently entered into a friendly conspiracy to maintain their own reading of his conduct; and whenever he began to make penitential allusions to it, one or other of them would, so to speak, jump down his throat with an encomium on the motive they chose to attribute to him for originally allying himself to the Lestrade combination. Nor did it add to his comfort on the last of these occasions to catch the Senator deliberately winking at the General.