The gloom of his mood was enhanced by his intense loneliness in the huge feudal monastery that now called him master, for Forsyth had been unable to join him, owing to difficulties in obtaining release from his present duties.
Beaumanoir took out and read for the fifth time a letter which had arrived that morning from his friend and secretary:
"My dear Duke (I mustn't use the irreverent 'Charley' any more),—I am still having trouble with the F.O. people about my departure, but I think I may safely promise to get away to you on Tuesday. In fact, I shall make a point of doing so, even if I have to leave the public service in disgrace, for you must forgive my saying that I am rather uneasy about you. The other day you seemed like a man with a millstone round his neck, and I take it that one of the duties of a private secretary is to remove millstones from the person of his employer. I only wish you would confide fully in me, and command me in any way—but that is, of course, your affair.
"I dined with my uncle, General Sadgrove, last night, and had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. and Miss Sherman there. The latter is indeed a charming girl. She was rather shy in talking about you, having heard from my uncle that the Mr. Hanbury she met on shipboard was probably the Duke of Beaumanoir on his way to enter into his kingdom. Mrs. Sherman waxed enthusiastic on your 'old-world courtesy' and the General, who chaffs the old lady, remarked that she had been equally laudatory before she discovered your rank.
"They were all very kind and congratulatory on my announcing my engagement to Sybil, which, as I wrote you yesterday, was ratified within ten minutes of your leaving me at the door of Beaumanoir House.
"You may be interested to hear that I did not go to tea with Mrs. Talmage Eglinton to-day.—Yours,
"Alec Forsyth."
The Duke crushed the letter back into his pocket, and came to a resolution.
"I'll run up to town to-morrow and call on the Shermans," he said to himself. "And now I'll do the proper thing, and go to church. I'm not going to crouch in corners because of that patriarchal old fiend at the Cecil."
The church at which generations of Hanburys had worshiped was in the center of Tarrant village, a mile from the lodge gates, but there was a short cut to it across the park. This was the route taken by the Duke, who first crossed the greensward and then passed out by a private wicket into the road after traversing the belt of copse that fringed the demesne. The villagers, who had waited for his coming, standing bare-headed in the churchyard, were a little disappointed that he had not driven up in full state. But the solitary gentleman limping up the path atoned for the lack of ceremony and won their hearts by his friendly smile; and a handshake to one or two of the older inhabitants, whom he remembered as a boy, clinched the matter. The verdict went round that the new Duke would "do."
The service that morning was, it is to be feared, more ducal than devotional. From the white-robed choir, ranged among the tombs of dead-and-gone Hanburys in the chancel, to the hard-breathing rustics on the back benches every eye was turned and steadily kept on the lonely figure in the family pew. While grateful for the homage paid him, the Duke was not sorry when the ordeal was over and he was free to make his way homeward.
But he was not to get off so easily. As he was about to let himself through the private gate into the park, intending to go back, as he had come, through the copse, footsteps sounded behind him, and Mr. Bristow, the vicar, overtook him. They had already met on the previous day.
"Your Grace is alone still?" panted the clergyman. "Ah, I thought your secretary wouldn't find it so easy to cast his shackles. I am commissioned by Mrs. Bristow to say—I hope you won't think us presuming—that we shall be delighted if you will give us your company at our homely lunch."
A sudden impulse prompted Beaumanoir to accept the invitation. He had taken a liking for the hale, vigorous old vicar, who had the archives of his family by rote, and an hour or two in his society would take him out of himself. So he turned back and accompanied his host to the vicarage, where he made a good impression on Mrs. Bristow by his cordial praise of her training of the choir and by appreciation of her strawberries and cream.