CHAPTER XII
The Man Under the Seat
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When the Duke of Beaumanoir found himself alone in the railway carriage after Alec Forsyth’s departure he sank back in his corner with a certain sense of relief. The events of the last twenty-four hours had filled him with a very sincere regard for his cousin Sybil, and he had not much faith in the assurance given him by General Sadgrove that his journey down to Prior’s Tarrant would be free from danger. His past experiences led him to expect that the terrible Ziegler and his myrmidons would be more than a match for the shrewd but somewhat out-of-date Indian officer, and if there was to be an “episode” on the railway he would be glad to think that it could not now plunge his plucky young cousin into mourning for her lover.
“She is a girl in a thousand,” he murmured, as he lit a cigarette; “I should never forgive myself if I were the means of making her a widow before she is a wife. If, as I half sus-
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