For some mysterious reason her aloofness from her lover vanished that morning, and she and Forsyth were on the best of terms. They spent two hours together wandering in the park, where in one of the more remote glades Azimoolah flitted up to them from the bushes, and, regarding Sybil with awe-struck veneration, made a deep salaam and was gone. The Duke, who had given his word of honor to the General not to go beyond the park gates, passed the time partly with his bailiff and partly strolling with Leonie in the gardens and glass-houses. The friendship between Beaumanoir and his beautiful guest, so promisingly begun on board the _St. Paul_, seemed to have lost ground. Though he was much in her society, he avoided intimate topics, and often puzzled her with a hastily averted look of wistful tenderness in strange contrast to his assiduous but commonplace hospitality. Half an hour before luncheon General Sadgrove, returning on foot from the station and looking five years older for his run up to London, met the two young couples, who had now joined forces, as they were entering the mansion. Forsyth gave his uncle an anxious glance of inquiry, but the old man passed him by unheeding, and addressed the Duke in a tone of icy formality. "I shall be obliged if your Grace will give me five minutes in the library on a very urgent matter," he said, adding, with significant emphasis, "_I have been with Mr. Ziegler this morning._" Beaumanoir, gone all pale and tremulous, made a palpable effort at self-control as he replied: "Come into the library by all means, General. But I am afraid you will find me quite as reticent as I am sure Ziegler was." The interview lasted till long after the luncheon gong had sounded, and when at length the Duke and the General entered the dining-room two pairs of watchful eyes observed that their relative attitudes had been reversed. The General’s usually impassive face was working so painfully that Mrs. Sadgrove half rose from her chair at sight of her husband, checking herself with difficulty; while the Duke bore himself almost jauntily, and began chaffing Sybil about her devotion to Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, who was still, by latest bulletin from Rosa, "suffering ze grand torments" and unable to leave her room.