stood face to face with death in this house not ten minutes ago. I found your sham parson here, professing to be an official detective; but I doubted him from the first.”
His raised tones reached Sybil, who realized that the house of Beaumanoir was confronted by no ordinary emergency. What the peril could be that threatened her noble relative she had no means of knowing, or any wish to know; but the Duke’s description of himself as standing “face to face with death” amid the seeming security of his own white drawing-room touched her with the icy hand of unknown dread, and, moroever, filled her with a sense of responsibility. The man who was not safe under the dazzling lights of that splendid apartment, with a host of servants within call, was going forth into all the insecurity of the London streets at midnight because, her instinct told her, he would not expose her to the same danger.
Her cousin’s chivalry appealed not only to her loyalty to the house, but to that protective impulse which springs readily in every woman’s heart.
“I couldn’t help overhearing you,” she said, coming forward. “I, too, doubted that man—
[98]
