But in the morning, when, with the Frenchwoman Rosa, she took her departure by a train leaving so early that none of the house-party were visible, it was observed by the servants that Mrs. Talmage Eglinton was in the highest spirits, and, if possible, more stylishly appareled than usual. And Mr. Manson, the butler, looking regretfully after the station brougham as it drove away, murmured benedictions, having palmed the largest tip that had come his way in a quarter of a century.
"A thorough lady," he sighed, as he closed the hall door and went in to preside at the breakfast sideboard. "Pity she was called away unexpected."
The Treasury bonds had reached their goal in the vaults of the Bank of England, and Senator Sherman, having duly discharged his duty to his Republic, was speeding back to his wife and daughter at Prior's Tarrant, with, as he quaintly phrased it, "a considerable load off his chest." In the reserved compartment with him were the Duke of Beaumanoir and General Sadgrove, who had insisted on forming an escort.
The Duke, who had been buoyed up with excitement till the bonds were safe in the bank, had fallen into dejection on the return journey. His two companions persisted in treating him as a hero, whereas he guessed that they were both aware of the true state of the case. He knew that one of them was, for he had himself, under threat of information being given to the police, confessed everything to the General after the latter's visit to the hotel on the day of "Mrs. Talmage Eglinton's" supposed confinement to her room; and, at any rate, the Senator must have heard something of the truth, or he would not have been prepared the night before to confound Cora Lestrade's correct accusation with a generous but entirely erroneous construction of his complicity.
All this made Beaumanoir miserable and ill at ease, the more so that he had three times attempted, without success, to terminate his false position. The two gentlemen had evidently entered into a friendly conspiracy to maintain their own reading of his conduct; and whenever he began to make penitential allusions to it, one or other of them would, so to speak, jump down his throat with an encomium on the motive they chose to attribute to him for originally allying himself to the Lestrade combination. Nor did it add to his comfort on the last of these occasions to catch the Senator deliberately winking at the General.