enough to be a little hurt that you don’t appear to think so.”
“My dear girl, what have I done? ’Pon honor, I don’t know that I have done anything,” the General protested piteously.
“That’s just it. It’s because you have done nothing, or next to nothing, that your contemptuous reference to ‘too many women’ seems to me a trifle unkind,” replied Sybil, pretending to misunderstand him. “What would have happened to my cousin, when the panel was cut the other night at Beaumanoir House, if it hadn’t been for a woman?”
The General accepted the reproof in thoughtful silence, forced to admit to himself that it was not uncalled for. If it had not been for Sybil Hanbury’s nerve and courage on the occasion when the bogus detective officer had secreted himself in the Duke’s town house, the answer to her question might have had to be written in blood. Her quick apprehension of subtle danger, her determination to sit up and watch, and her cool presence of mind in face of the emergency when it arose, had saved the situation and stamped her as of sterling metal.
“I apologize,” he jerked out presently. “I
[214]
