"No, really I can’t stay, dear Mrs. Sadgrove, even to have the pleasure of a chat with the General," she prattled. "I have half a dozen other calls to pay, and you have beguiled me into staying too long already. Good-bye. Good-bye, General. Pray don’t trouble to come down." And with a half-impudent bow of exaggerated respect to the Shermans, she swept out, with the master of the house in attendance. General Sadgrove returned at once to the drawing-room after escorting the visitor to her carriage. He was a man who bore his years easily; singularly slow and scant of speech, but alert of eye and almost jaunty in the erectness of his bearing. He had gained his C.B. for prominent services in the suppression of Thuggee and Dacoity, and his name is still held in wholesome dread by the criminals of India whose method is violence. It had once been said of him by a high official: "Jem Sadgrove doesn’t have to worry about _finding_ clues. He makes them for himself, and they always yield a true scent. He’s got the nose of a fox-terrier, and the patience and speed of a greyhound." But that was long ago, and it might be supposed that in such pleasant duties of retirement as the ushering out of dainty visitors from his wife’s tea-table his faculties had become blunted. Nor in the law-abiding precincts of Belgravia could there be scope for the old-time energy. Yet Mrs. Sadgrove, who knew the signs and portents of her husband’s face, looked twice at him with just a shade of anxiety as she asked whether he would take some tea. "Thanks," he said, and taking his cup he went and stood on the rug before the empty hearth. He stirred his tea slowly, with his eyes wandering from one to the other of the four women in the room. "You good people seem singularly calm, considering that you must just have been listening to a very exciting story," he remarked. "Indeed, no," replied Sybil, taking upon herself to answer. "The lady to whom you have just been doing the polite bored us intensely. Leonie says, for all the dash she’s cutting in London, she’s an _incognita_ so far as America is concerned." The General continued to stir his tea impassively. "Did she not inform you in the course of her small talk," he inquired presently, "that on her way here her carriage had knocked a man down and gone near to killing him?" The question evoked a chorus of interested negatives. "Neither did she say anything to me about it," said the General gravely. "Then how did you become aware of the accident?" Mrs. Sadgrove ventured to ask.