Then, again, Beaumanoir reflected with a sigh, his new and sweet friendship with Leonie Sherman—a friendship to which no blot on his escutcheon need now put limits—would be rudely snapped. The King of Terrors would take away what his saved honor had restored, and perhaps it was the bitterest drop in his cup to feel that he might be giving his life to lose what in another sense he would have given his life to win. To ask Leonie to link her fate to his, with that dark shadow hanging over him, was out of the question. Once he had taken up his pen to denounce Ziegler to the police authorities anonymously, but he had despondingly laid it down again. That crafty practitioner had doubtless safeguarded himself against such an obvious course by being prepared with an unimpeachable record which it would be impossible to shake unless he came forward and avowed complicity. There, again, dishonor waited for him, and he had already made his choice that a short shrift was preferable to that. The gloom of his mood was enhanced by his intense loneliness in the huge feudal monastery that now called him master, for Forsyth had been unable to join him, owing to difficulties in obtaining release from his present duties. Beaumanoir took out and read for the fifth time a letter which had arrived that morning from his friend and secretary: "My dear Duke (I mustn’t use the irreverent 'Charley’ any more),—I am still having trouble with the F.O. people about my departure, but I think I may safely promise to get away to you on Tuesday. In fact, I shall make a point of doing so, even if I have to leave the public service in disgrace, for you must forgive my saying that I am rather uneasy about you. The other day you seemed like a man with a millstone round his neck, and I take it that one of the duties of a private secretary is to remove millstones from the person of his employer. I only wish you would confide fully in me, and command me in any way—but that is, of course, your affair. "I dined with my uncle, General Sadgrove, last night, and had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. and Miss Sherman there. The latter is indeed a charming girl. She was rather shy in talking about you, having heard from my uncle that the Mr. Hanbury she met on shipboard was probably the Duke of Beaumanoir on his way to enter into his kingdom. Mrs. Sherman waxed enthusiastic on your ’old-world courtesy’ and the General, who chaffs the old lady, remarked that she had been equally laudatory before she discovered your rank. "They were all very kind and congratulatory on my announcing my engagement to Sybil, which, as I wrote you yesterday, was ratified within ten minutes of your leaving me at the door of Beaumanoir House. "You may be interested to hear that I did _not_ go to tea with Mrs. Talmage Eglinton to-day.—Yours, "_Alec Forsyth_."