"It’s all right," the General announced to the assembled spectators, who by this time included Mrs. Sadgrove and the Shermans. "This is his Highness the Thakore of Bhurtnagur, and he didn’t mean to be rude. Just a little misunderstanding of his legal rights outside his own jurisdiction. He says he’ll look for rooms at some other hotel, as he can’t have those he wants here." A murmur of relief went up from the embarrassed attendants, who with great deference proceeded to escort the swarthy potentate to the carriage which it was understood was waiting for him. At the same time Mrs. Sadgrove held out her hand to Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, and, declining that lady’s not too pressing offer of tea, sailed away to the stair-head, accompanied by Leonie and her mother. The General was the last to make his adieus, 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." CHAPTER XI—_On the Terrace_ The home park at Prior’s Tarrant lay bathed in the gentle glow of a waning moon, but the hoary façade of the mansion itself, and the terrace that skirted it, were in shadow. Up and down in front of the long row of windows a red spark passed and repassed with monotonous regularity—the light of General Sadgrove’s cigar as he waited in growing impatience for the coming of the Duke. After his social duties of the afternoon he had paid a hurried visit to Beaumanoir House to arrange for the Duke’s departure in company with his new secretary, and then, armed with credentials from the Duke and heralded by a preparatory telegram, he had proceeded to the Hertfordshire seat by an earlier train. He had good reasons for traveling separately. And now the carriage which he had sent to the little wayside station of Tarrant Road two miles off was overdue, and the General was beginning to chafe.