The afternoon passed without external signs that the house-party was living on the verge of an active volcano. But as it was growing dusk Forsyth, at the risk of being late for dinner, took a solitary walk in the direction of a certain stile, by which the Prior’s Tarrant pastures were approached by a short cut across fields from Tarrant Road railway station. He arrived at the stile in the nick of time to give a helping hand to Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, who had just reached the spot from the opposite direction. The hour was the one when the guests at the house might be expected to be dressing for dinner, and it also tallied with the arrival of a London train at the station; but neither alluded to these incidentals of such an obviously chance meeting. "I trust that your headache is better," said Forsyth, politely. But the headache, he was assured, was rather worse than better. The sufferer averred that she had slipped out an hour before, to go for a quiet walk in the meadows in the hope of obtaining relief; but the remedy had been of no avail, and all that remained was to go back to bed. "Won’t you walk back with me?" Mrs. Talmage Eglinton added, devouring the young Scotsman’s healthy, good-looking face with eyes of invitation. "I don’t seem ever to get you alone nowadays." "I am very sorry, but I have to go a little further," replied Forsyth, and, raising his hat, he passed on. But it was a very little way further that he had to go, for at the end of the first meadow he turned and followed in the lady’s wake back to the mansion, catching, as he did so, a glimpse of Azimoolah moving stealthily in the bushes at the side of the path. That night the post-bag which one of the Prior’s Tarrant grooms conveyed to the office in the village contained a letter addressed to "Clinton Ziegler, Esqre.," at the Hotel Cecil, couched thus: "_The gentleman interviewed in the Bowery, New York, by Mr. Jevons on your behalf has reconsidered the matter, and is now prepared to carry out his commitment. He is so shaken by recent occurrences that he does not feel up to coming himself till he has received assurances, but his secretary will call at the hotel on Monday for instructions, which please hand to the secretary in writing and carefully sealed._" CHAPTER XVI—_A Delicate Mission_ It was on Sunday evening that Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, after a pious pilgrimage to the village church in company with her assiduous friend Sybil Hanbury, sought the Duke and asked if she might have a carriage to take her to the station for the up-train on the following morning. She would return in the evening, she said, but imperative business with her milliner and tailor demanded her presence in London for a few hours.