and already apprised by speaking-tube that visitors were coming up, received them with effusion, and made no effort to conceal her surprise when the General appeared in the wake of the ladies. She rallied him on his new-found politeness, and openly avowed that he must have some secret object in seeking her good-will.
The General, disclaiming anything unusual in his conduct, bore the flow of badinage meekly, but under his gray mustache he muttered:
“Confound the woman! She is clever, or else Jem Sadgrove has blundered.”’
The conversation drifted into the usual channels of small talk, and by the time the General joined in he had assimilated one important fact in connection with his surroundings. The suite of apartments in which he was doing the penance of a duty call was a split suite. There was a door at the end of the room, across which a fairly heavy writing-table was placed, denoting that the door was not in use, as naturally it would have been if the room beyond had been one of those rented by Mrs. Talmage Eglinton. The discovery and his own deduction caused an odd little crease at
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