and he made them, oddly enough, much more cordially than the women-folk.
“Pleasant thing, a short parting,” he ejaculated, as he bent over the fair American’s jeweled hand. “We shall meet in a day or two at Prior’s Tarrant, eh?”
Mrs. Talmage Eglinton smiled sweetly up at the rugged face of the veteran man-hunter.
“Come, General, you can’t expect me to give myself away like that,” she said. “I shan’t make up my mind until I get the invitation. You might be a bad, bold dissembler, you know, just taking a rise out of me; and then what a fool I should look if I had said that I was going to stay with the Duke.”
“I might be a dissembler, but you couldn’t look a fool—under any circumstances,” replied the General gallantly, as he turned away.
Mrs. Talmage Eglinton stood watching the erect figure march down the corridor, and suddenly called after him:
“When does the Duke himself go into the country, General?”
The erect figure wheeled as on a pivot, and the answer came back without a second’s pause.
“To-night, by the 8.45 from St. Pancras. Alec Forsyth goes down with him.”
[138]
