Sybil's pretty mouth bent close to confide the startling fact that the General was going to London in the morning with the intention of bearding Mr. Ziegler in his den—otherwise, in his rooms at the Cecil. If he should be refused permission to see Ziegler, or, seeing him, should be unable to satisfy himself of his respectability, he was going straight on to Scotland Yard to impart his suspicions to the authorities. Sybil sketched the carrying out of this amazing programme and its probable consequences with much animation and ridicule, but her hearer's interest tailed off into undisguised indifference, ending in a deliberate yawn.
"What a very stupid affair!" Mrs. Talmage Eglinton murmured. "Do you know, it has made me quite sleepy, and—and I think I'll go to bed. I have started a real, clawing, hammering headache. Shouldn't wonder if I am not laid up to-morrow."
Nodding a good-night to the others, she rose and swept from the room, followed by Sybil, who, profusely sympathetic, insisted on accompanying her to her own apartments. At the door of the latter a dark-eyed, slender woman, in a black dress with broad white collar and cuffs, was standing. This was Rosa, the French maid, on whose services Mrs. Talmage Eglinton professed herself entirely dependent.
"One of my headaches, Rosa. The pink draught—quickly!" cried the incipient invalid, and pausing on the threshold she bade an affectionate good-night to her girlish admirer. "I am not really ill—only a little run down," she assured her. "I do hope I shan't have to keep my room to-morrow."
The brilliant vision of Parisian elegance having vanished into the room, Sybil made her way downstairs, and in the hall encountered General Sadgrove, who wore a light overcoat over his evening things and a gray felt hat. He was engaged in wiping the wet from his patent-leather shoes with his handkerchief, but looked up on Sybil's approach, and, removing his hat, went on with his occupation.
"Still raining?" said Sybil, carelessly.
"Like the very—I mean, like it used to in the monsoon," the General checked himself.
No more passed, except a slight raising of the old soldier's eyebrows and a corresponding droop of one of the lady's eyelids. The General having restored the gloss to his footgear and doffed his overcoat, they went on with linked arms to the tapestry-room, where, however, the party shortly broke up, the ladies to retire for the night, and the men to go to the smoking-room. The Duke remained but a short time, leaving the General and Forsyth with the playful remark that he was growing quite bold after two days' immunity, and hoped they would not sit up all night—which was exactly what one or other of them had been doing ever since they came to Prior's Tarrant, and, moreover, what they intended to do for the present.
"Sybil has done her part," said the General, as soon as he was alone with his nephew. "And I have prepared Azimoolah to be on the lookout for results. He tells me that the men in the dog-cart were outside the park wall again last night, and that there was the same exhibition of a red lamp in that infernal French maid's window."
"An abortive attempt at communication?" asked Forsyth.