"She writes rather flippantly for a stranger," he added, eyeing the scented missive doubtfully, but not offering to show it. "I hope it’s all right for her to meet my cousin Sybil, and—er—the other ladies. She’s coming on your recommendation, you know, General, so you must vouch for her good behavior." Sadgrove growled unintelligibly, and was at pains to conceal a sudden upheaval of his facial muscles. For the Duke’s reference to Mrs. Talmage Eglinton in her relations to the other guests had all at once opened up to his mind a contingency which he had overlooked—a terrible contingency, which demanded instant consideration before the American widow was admitted to the house. He made an early excuse for quitting the table, and, exacting a promise that Beaumanoir and Forsyth would for the present remain indoors, he went out into the park to face the position alone, and thresh it out to a conclusion. Walking under the trees in the historic elm avenue, it was not till he had smoked a whole cigar and lit another that he was able to approach the problem with anything like calmness. For he was suffering from the humiliation of having to admit that he had committed the grievous error of imperiling the life of a woman—one, too, whom he held in affectionate regard only second to his wife. If his suspicion of Mrs. Talmage Eglinton was as well founded as instinct told him, she ought never to have been asked to stay under the same roof as Sybil Hanbury, her victorious rival in the affections of a man who had repulsed her advances by stolidly ignoring them. "Gad! but I’d cut my hand off rather than harm should come to that girl, let alone never being able to look Alec in the face again," he muttered, as he gnawed his white mustache in perplexity. The situation was indeed serious from the point of view that Mrs. Talmage Eglinton was head of a gang of international criminals, and that she was, moreover, as he put it in his simple soldier phrase, "sweet upon" his nephew Alec. If, for her as yet unexplained ends, she would not stick at assassinating the Duke of Beaumanoir, she would be capable of wreaking a deadly vengeance on the girl who had won the heart she hungered for. Once installed as a guest in the mansion, she would have plenty of facilities of which she might make venomous use. The General had engineered her invitation with the laudable purpose of keeping her under constant observation and of making communication with her confederates difficult; but in his zeal for check-mating her predatory designs he had forgotten her amatory ones.