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+**The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Snare, by Rafael Sabatini**
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+Title:  The Snare
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+Author:  Rafael Sabatini
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+June, 2001  [Etext #2687]
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+This Etext prepared by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SNARE
+
+BY RAFAEL SABATINI
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+    I.  THE AFFAIR AT TAVORA
+
+   II.  THE ULTIMATUM
+
+  III.  LADY O'MOY
+
+   IV.  COUNT SAMOVAL
+
+    V.  THE FUGITIVE
+
+   VI.  MISS ARMYTAGE'S PEARLS
+
+  VII.  THE ALLY
+
+ VIII.  THE INTELLIGENCE OFFICER
+
+   IX.  THE GENERAL ORDER
+
+    X.  THE STIFLED QUARREL
+
+   XI.  THE CHALLENGE
+
+  XII.  THE DUEL
+
+ XIII.  POLICHINELLE
+
+  XIV.  THE CHAMPION
+
+   XV.  THE WALLET
+
+  XVI.  THE EVIDENCE
+
+  XVII.  BITTER WATER
+
+ XVIII.  FOOL'S MATE
+
+   XIX.  THE TRUTH
+
+    XX.  THE RESIGNATION
+
+   XXI.  SANCTUARY
+
+   POSTSCRIPTUM
+
+
+
+
+THE SNARE
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE AFFAIR AT TAVORA
+
+
+It is established beyond doubt that Mr. Butler was drunk at the time.
+This rests upon the evidence of Sergeant Flanagan and the troopers
+who accompanied him, and it rests upon Mr. Butler's own word, as we
+shall see.  And let me add here and now that however wild and
+irresponsible a rascal he may have been, yet by his own lights he
+was a man of honour, incapable of falsehood, even though it were
+calculated to save his skin.  I do not deny that Sir Thomas Picton
+has described him as a "thieving blackguard."  But I am sure that
+this was merely the downright, rather extravagant manner, of
+censure peculiar to that distinguished general, and that those who
+have taken the expression at its purely literal value have been
+lacking at once in charity and in knowledge of the caustic,
+uncompromising terms of speech of General Picton whom Lord
+Wellington, you will remember, called a rough, foulmouthed devil.
+
+In further extenuation it may truthfully be urged that the whole
+hideous and odious affair was the result of a misapprehension;
+although I cannot go so far as one of Lieutenant Butler's apologists
+and accept the view that he was the victim of a deliberate plot on
+the part of his too-genial host at Regoa.  That is a misconception
+easily explained.  This host's name happened to be Souza, and the
+apologist in question has very rashly leapt at the conclusion that
+he was a member of that notoriously intriguing family, of which the
+chief members were the Principal Souza, of the Council of Regency
+at Lisbon, and the Chevalier Souza, Portuguese minister to the
+Court of St. James's.  Unacquainted with Portugal, our apologist
+was evidently in ignorance of the fact that the name of Souza is
+almost as common in that country as the name of Smith in this.  He
+may also have been misled by the fact that Principal Souza did not
+neglect to make the utmost capital out of the affair, thereby
+increasing the difficulties with which Lord Wellington was already
+contending as a result of incompetence and deliberate malice on
+the part both of the ministry at home and of the administration in
+Lisbon.
+
+Indeed, but for these factors it is unlikely that the affair could
+ever have taken place at all.  If there had been more energy on the
+part of Mr. Perceval and the members of the Cabinet, if there had
+been less bad faith and self-seeking on the part of the Opposition,
+Lord Wellington's campaign would not have been starved as it was;
+and if there had been less bad faith and self-seeking of an even
+more stupid and flagrant kind on the part of the Portuguese Council
+of Regency, the British Expeditionary Force would not have been
+left without the stipulated supplies and otherwise hindered at
+every step.
+
+Lord Wellington might have experienced the mental agony of Sir John
+Moore under similar circumstances fifteen months earlier.  That he
+did suffer, and was to suffer yet more, his correspondence shows.
+But his iron will prevented that suffering from disturbing the
+equanimity of his mind.  The Council of Regency, in its concern to
+court popularity with the aristocracy of Portugal, might balk his
+measures by its deliberate supineness; echoes might reach him of
+the voices at St. Stephen's that loudly dubbed his dispositions rash,
+presumptuous and silly; catch-halfpenny journalists at home and men
+of the stamp of Lord Grey might exploit their abysmal military
+ignorance in reckless criticism and censure of his operations; he
+knew what a passionate storm of anger and denunciation had arisen
+from the Opposition when he had been raised to the peerage some
+months earlier, after the glorious victory of Talavera, and how,
+that victory notwithstanding, it had been proclaimed that his
+conduct of the campaign was so incompetent as to deserve, not reward,
+but punishment; and he was aware of the growing unpopularity of the
+war in England, knew that the Government - ignorant of what he was
+so laboriously preparing - was chafing at his inactivity of the
+past few months, so that a member of the Cabinet wrote to him
+exasperatedly, incredibly and fatuously -- "for God's sake do
+something -- anything so that blood be spilt."
+
+A heart less stout might have been broken, a genius less mighty
+stifled in this evil tangle of stupidity, incompetence and
+malignity that sprang up and flourished about him can every hand.
+A man less single-minded must have succumbed to exasperation, thrown
+up his command and taken ship for home, inviting some of his
+innumerable critics to take his place at the head of the troops,
+and give free rein to the military genius that inspired their
+critical dissertations.  Wellington, however, has been rightly
+termed of iron, and never did he show himself more of iron than in
+those trying days of 1810.  Stern, but with a passionless sternness,
+he pursued his way towards the goal he had set himself, allowing no
+criticism, no censure, no invective so much as to give him pause in
+his majestic progress.
+
+Unfortunately the lofty calm of the Commander-in-Chief was not
+shared by his lieutenants.  The Light Division was quartered along
+the River Agueda, watching the Spanish frontier, beyond which
+Marshal Ney was demonstrating against Ciudad Rodrigo, and for lack
+of funds its fiery-tempered commander, Sir Robert Craufurd, found
+himself at last unable to feed his troops.  Exasperated by these
+circumstances, Sir Robert was betrayed into an act of rashness.  He
+seized some church plate at Pinhel that he might convert it into
+rations.  It was an act which, considering the general state of
+public feeling in the country at the time, might have had the
+gravest consequences, and Sir Robert was subsequently forced to do
+penance and afford redress.  That, however, is another story.  I
+but mention the incident here because the affair of Tavora with
+which I am concerned may be taken to have arisen directly out of
+it, and Sir Robert's behaviour may be construed as setting an
+example and thus as affording yet another extenuation of Lieutenant
+Butler's offence.
+
+Our lieutenant was sent upon a foraging expedition into the valley
+of the Upper Douro, at the head of a half-troop of the 8th Dragoons,
+two squadrons of which were attached at the time to the Light
+Division.  To be more precise, he was to purchase and bring into
+Pinhel a hundred head of cattle, intended some for slaughter and
+some for draught.  His instructions were to proceed as far as Regoa
+and there report himself to one Bartholomew Bearsley, a prosperous
+and influential English wine-grower, whose father had acquired
+considerable vineyards in the Douro.  He was reminded of the almost
+hostile disposition of the peasantry in certain districts; warned
+to handle them with tact and to suffer no straggling on the part
+of his troopers; and advised to place himself in the hands of Mr.
+Bearsley for all that related to the purchase of the cattle.  Let
+it be admitted at once that had Sir Robert Craufurd been acquainted
+with Mr. Butler's feather-brained, irresponsible nature, he would
+have selected any officer rather than our lieutenant to command that
+expedition.  But the Irish Dragoons had only lately come to Pinhel,
+and the general himself was not immediately concerned.
+
+Lieutenant Butler set out on a blustering day of March at the head
+of his troopers, accompanied by Cornet O.'Rourke and two sergeants,
+and at Pesqueira he was further reinforced by a Portuguese guide.
+They found quarters that night at Ervedoza, and early on the morrow
+they were in the saddle again, riding along the heights above the
+Cachao da Valleria, through which the yellow, swollen river swirled
+and foamed along its rocky way.  The prospect, formidable even in
+the full bloom of fruitful and luxuriant summer, was forbidding and
+menacing now as some imagined gorge of the nether regions.  The
+towering granite heights across the turgid stream were shrouded in
+mist and sweeping rain, and from the leaden heavens overhead the
+downpour was of a sullen and merciless steadiness, starting at
+every step a miniature torrent to go swell the roaring waters in
+the gorge, and drenching the troop alike in body and in spirit.
+Ahead, swathed to the chin in his blue cavalry cloak, the water
+streaming from his leather helmet, rode Lieutenant Butler, cursing
+the weather, the country; the Light Division, and everything else
+that occurred to him as contributing to his present discomfort.
+Beside him, astride of a mule, rode the Portuguese guide in a caped
+cloak of thatched straw, which made him look for all the world like
+a bottle of his native wine in its straw sheath.  Conversation
+between the two was out of the question, for the guide spoke no
+English and the lieutenant's knowledge of Portuguese was very far
+from conversational.
+
+Presently the ground sloped, and the troop descended from the heights
+by a road flanked with dripping pinewoods, black and melancholy, that
+for a while screened them off from the remainder of the sodden world.
+Thence they emerged near the head of the bridge that spanned the
+swollen river and led them directly into the town of Regoa.  Through
+the mud and clay of the deserted, narrow, unpaved streets the dragoons
+squelched their way, under a super-deluge, for the rain was now
+reinforced by steady and overwhelming sheets of water descending on
+either side from the gutter-shaped tiles that roofed the houses.
+
+Inquisitive faces showed here and there behind blurred windows; odd
+doors were opened that a peasant family might stare in questioning
+wonder - and perhaps in some concern - at the sodden pageant that
+was passing.  But in the streets themselves the troopers met no
+living thing, all the world having scurried to shelter from the
+pitiless downpour.
+
+Beyond the town they were brought by their guide to a walled garden,
+and halted at a gateway.  Beyond this could be seen a fair white
+house set in the foreground of the vineyards that rose in terraces
+up the hillside until they were lost from sight in the lowering
+veils of mist.  Carved on the granite lintel of that gateway, the
+lieutenant beheld the inscription, "BARTHOLOMEU BEARSLEY, 1744,"
+and knew himself at his destination, at the gates of the son or
+grandson - he knew not which, nor cared - of the original tenant of
+that wine farm.
+
+Mr. Bearsley, however, was from home.  The lieutenant was informed
+of this by Mr. Bearsley's steward, a portly, genial, rather priestly
+gentleman in smooth black broadcloth, whose name was Souza - a name
+which, as I have said, has given rise to some misconceptions.  Mr.
+Bearsley himself had lately left for England, there to wait until
+the disturbed state of Portugal should be happily repaired.  He had
+been a considerable sufferer from the French invasion under Soult,
+and none may blame him for wishing to avoid a repetition of what
+already he had undergone, especially now that it was rumoured that
+the Emperor in person would lead the army gathering for conquest
+on the frontiers.
+
+But had Mr. Bearsley been at home the dragoons could have received
+no warmer welcome than that which was extended to them by Fernando
+Souza.  Greeting the lieutenant in intelligible English, he implored
+him, in the florid manner of the Peninsula, to count the house and
+all within it his own property, and to command whatever he might
+desire.
+
+The troopers found accommodation in the kitchen and in the spacious
+hall, where great fires of pine logs were piled up for their comfort;
+and for the remainder of the day they abode there in various states
+of nakedness, relieved by blankets and straw capotes, what time the
+house was filled with the steam and stench of their drying garments.
+Rations had been short of late on the Agueda, and, in addition, their
+weary ride through the rain had made the men sharp-set.  Abundance
+of food was placed before them by the solicitude of Fernando Souza,
+and they feasted, as they had not feasted for many months, upon roast
+kid, boiled rice and golden maize bread, washed down by a copious
+supply of a rough and not too heady wine that the discreet and
+discriminating steward judged appropriate to their palates and
+capable of supporting some abuse.
+
+Akin to the treatment of the troopers in hall and kitchen, but on a
+nobler scale, was the treatment of Lieutenant Butler and Cornet
+O'Rourke in the dining-room.  For them a well-roasted turkey took
+the place of kid, and Souza went down himself to explore the cellars
+for a well-sunned, time-ripened Douro table wine which he vowed -
+and our dragoons agreed with him - would put the noblest Burgundy
+to shame; and then with the dessert there was a Port the like of
+which Mr. Butler - who was always of a nice taste in wine, and who
+was coming into some knowledge of Port from his residence in the
+country - had never dreamed existed.
+
+For four and twenty hours the dragoons abode at Mr. Bearsley's
+quinta, thanking God for the discomforts that had brought them to
+such comfort, feasting in this land of plenty as only those can
+feast who have kept a rigid Lent.  Nor was this all.  The benign
+Souza was determined that the sojourn there of these representatives
+of his country's deliverers should be a complete rest and holiday.
+Not for Mr. Butler to journey to the uplands in this matter of a
+herd of bullocks.  Fernando Souza had at command a regiment of
+labourers, who were idle at this time of year, and whom his good
+nature would engage on behalf of his English guests.  Let the
+lieutenant do no more than provide the necessary money for the
+cattle, and the rest should happen as by enchantment - and Souza
+himself would see to it that the price was fair and proper.
+
+The lieutenant asked no better.  He had no great opinion of himself
+either as cattle dealer or cattle drover, nor did his ambitions
+beget in him any desire to excel as one or the other.  So he was
+well content that his host should have the bullocks fetched to Regoa
+for him.  The herd was driven in on the following afternoon, by when
+the rain had ceased, and our lieutenant had every reason to be
+pleased when he beheld the solid beasts procured.  Having disbursed
+the amount demanded - an amount more reasonable far than he had
+been prepared to pay - Mr. Butler would have set out forthwith to
+return to Pinhel, knowing how urgent was the need of the division
+and with what impatience the choleric General Craufurd would be
+awaiting him.
+
+"Why, so you shall, so you shall," said the priestly, soothing Souza.
+"But first you'll dine.  There is good dinner - ah, but what good
+dinner! - that I have order.  And there is a wine - ah, but you
+shall give me news of that wine."
+
+Lieutenant Butler hesitated.  Cornet O'Rourke watched him anxiously,
+praying that he might succumb to the temptation, and attempted
+suasion in the form of a murmured blessing upon Souza's hospitality.
+
+"Sir Robert will be impatient," demurred the lieutenant.
+
+"But half-hour," protested Souza.  "What is half-hour?  And in
+half-hour you will have dine."
+
+"True," ventured the cornet; "and it's the devil himself knows when
+we may dine again."
+
+"And the dinner is ready.  It can be serve this instant.  It shall,"
+said Souza with finality, and pulled the bell-rope.
+
+Mr. Butler, never dreaming - as indeed how could he? - that Fate
+was taking a hand in this business, gave way, and they sat down to
+dinner.  Henceforth you see him the sport of pitiless circumstance.
+
+They dined within the half-hour, as Souza had promised, and they
+dined exceedingly well.  If yesterday the steward had been able
+without warning of their coming to spread at short notice so
+excellent a feast, conceive what had been accomplished now by
+preparation.  Emptying his fourth and final bumper of rich red
+Douro, Mr. Butler paid his host the compliment of a sigh and pushed
+back his chair.
+
+But Souza detained him, waving a hand that trembled with anxiety,
+and with anxiety stamped upon his benignly rotund and shaven
+countenance.
+
+"An instant yet," he implored.  "Mr. Bearsley would never pardon me
+did I let you go without what he call a stirrup-cup to keep you from
+the ills that lurk in the wind of the Serra.  A glass - but one - of
+that Port you tasted yesterday.  I say but a glass, yet I hope you
+will do honour to the bottle.  But a glass at least, at least!"  He
+implored it almost with tears.  Mr. Butler had reached that state of
+delicious torpor in which to take the road is the last agony; but
+duty was duty, and Sir Robert Craufurd had the fiend's own temper.
+Torn thus between consciousness of duty and the weakness of the
+flesh, he looked at O'Rourke.  O'Rourke, a cherubic fellow, who had
+for his years a very pretty taste in wine, returned the glance with
+a moist eye, and licked his lips.
+
+"In your place I should let myself be tempted," says he.  "It's an
+elegant wine, and ten minutes more or less is no great matter."
+
+The lieutenant discovered a middle way which permitted him to take a
+prompt decision creditable to his military instincts, but revealing a
+disgraceful though quite characteristic selfishness.
+
+"Very well," he said.  "Leave Sergeant Flanagan and ten men to wait
+for me, O'Rourke, and do you set out at once with the rest of the
+troop.  And take the cattle with you.  I shall overtake you before
+you have gone very far."
+
+O'Rourke's crestfallen air stirred the sympathetic Souza's pity.
+
+"But, Captain," he besought, "will you not allow the lieutenant - "
+
+Mr. Butler cut him short.  "Duty," said he sententiously, "is duty.
+Be off, O'Rourke."
+
+And O'Rourke, clicking his heels viciously, saluted and departed.
+
+Came presently the bottles in a basket - not one, as Souza had said,
+but three; and when the first was done Butler reflected that since
+O'Rourke and the cattle were already well upon the road there need
+no longer be any hurry about his own departure.  A herd of bullocks
+does not travel very quickly, and even with a few hours' start in
+a forty-mile journey is easily over-taken by a troop of horse
+travelling without encumbrance.
+
+You understand, then, how easily our lieutenant yielded himself to
+the luxurious circumstances, and disposed himself to savour the
+second bottle of that nectar distilled from the very sunshine of
+the Douro -- the phrase is his own.  The steward produced a box
+of very choice cigars, and although the lieutenant was not an
+habitual smoker, he permitted himself on this exceptional occasion
+to be further tempted.  Stretched in a deep chair beside the
+roaring fire of pine logs, he sipped and smoked and drowsed away
+the greater par of that wintry afternoon.  Soon the third bottle had
+gone the way of the second, and Mr. Bearsley's steward being a man
+of extremely temperate habit, it follow: that most of the wine had
+found its way down the lieutenant's thirsty gullet.
+
+It was perhaps a more potent vintage than he had at first suspected,
+and as the torpor produced by the dinner and the earlier, fuller
+wine was wearing off, it was succeeded by an exhilaration that
+played havoc with the few wits that Mr. Butler could call his own.
+
+The steward was deeply learned in wines and wine growing and in very
+little besides; consequently the talk was almost confined to that
+subject in its many branches, and he could be interesting enough,
+like all enthusiasts.  To a fresh burst of praise from Butler of the
+ruby vintage to which he had been introduced, the steward presently
+responded with a sigh:
+
+"Indeed, as you say, Captain, a great wine.  But we had a greater."
+
+"Impossible, by God," swore Butler, with a hiccup.
+
+"You may say so; but it is the truth.  We had a greater; a wonderful,
+clear vintage it was, of the year 1798 - a famous year on the Douro,
+the quite most famous year that we have ever known.  Mr. Bearsley
+sell some pipes to the monks at Tavora, who have bottle it and keep
+it.  I beg him at the time not to sell, knowing the value it must
+come to have one day.  But he sell all the same.  Ah, meu Deus!"
+The steward clasped his hands and raised rather prominent eyes to
+the ceiling, protesting to his Maker against his master's folly.
+"He say we have plenty, and now" - he spread fat hands in a gesture
+of despair - "and now we have none.  Some sons of dogs of French
+who came with Marshal Soult happen this way on a forage they discover
+the wine and they guzzle it like pigs."  He swore, and his benignity
+was eclipsed by wrathful memory.  He heaved himself up in a passion.
+
+"Think of that so priceless vintage drink like hogwash, as Mr.
+Bearsley say, by those god-dammed French swine.  "not a drop - not
+a spoonful remain.  But the monks at Tavora still have much of what
+they buy, I am told.  They treasure it for they know good wine.  All
+priests know good wine.  Ah yes!  Goddam!"  He fell into deep
+reflection.
+
+Lieutenant Butler stirred, and became sympathetic.
+
+"'San infern'l shame," said he indignantly.  "I'll no forgerrit when
+I . . . meet the French."  Then he too fell into reflection.
+
+He was a good Catholic, and, moreover, a Catholic who did not take
+things for granted.  The sloth and self-indulgence of the clergy in
+Portugal, being his first glimpse of conventuals in Latin countries,
+had deeply shocked him.  The vows of a monastic poverty that was
+kept carefully beyond the walls of the monastery offended his sense
+of propriety.  That men who had vowed themselves to pauperism, who
+wore coarse garments and went barefoot, should batten upon rich
+food and store up wines that gold could not purchase, struck him as
+a hideous incongruity.
+
+"And the monks drink this nectar?" he said aloud, and laughed
+sneeringly.  " I know the breed - the fair found belly wi' fat capon
+lined.  Tha's your poverty stricken Capuchin."
+
+Souza looked at him in sudden alarm, bethinking himself that all
+Englishmen were heretics, and knowing nothing of subtle distinctions
+between English and Irish.  In silence Butler finished the third and
+last bottle, and his thoughts fixed themselves with increasing
+insistence upon a wine reputed better than this of which there was
+great store in the cellars of the convent of Tavora.
+
+Abruptly he asked: "Where's Tavora?"  He was thinking perhaps of the
+comfort that such wine would bring to a company of war-worn soldiers
+in the valley of the Agueda.
+
+"Some ten leagues from here," answered Souza, and pointed to a map
+that hung upon the wall.
+
+The lieutenant rose, and rolled a thought unsteadily across the room.
+He was a tall, loose-limbed fellow, blue-eyed, fair-complexioned,
+with a thatch of fiery red hair excellently suited to his temperament.
+He halted before the map, and with legs wide apart, to afford him the
+steadying support of a broad basis, he traced with his finger the
+course of the Douro, fumbled about the district of Regoa, and
+finally hit upon the place he sought.
+
+"Why," he said, "seems to me 'sif we should ha' come that way.  I's
+shorrer road to Pesqueira than by the river."
+
+"As the bird fly," said Souza.  "But the roads be bad - just mule
+tracks, while by the river the road is tolerable good."
+
+"Yet," said the lieutenant, "I think I shall go back tha' way."
+
+The fumes of the wine were mounting steadily to addle his indifferent
+brains.  Every moment he was seeing things in proportions more and
+more false.  His resentment against priests who, sworn to
+self-abnegation, hoarded good wine, whilst soldiers sent to keep
+harm from priests' fat carcasses were left to suffer cold and even
+hunger, was increasing with every moment.  He would sample that wine
+at Tavora; and he would bear some of it away that his brother
+officers at Pinhel might sample it.  He would buy it.  Oh yes! There
+should be no plundering, no irregularity, no disregard of general
+orders.  He would buy the wine and pay for it - but himself he would
+fix the price, and see that the monks of Tavora made no profit out
+of their defenders.
+
+Thus he thought as he considered the map.  Presently, when having
+taken leave of Fernando Souza - that prince of hosts - Mr. Butler
+was riding down through the town with Sergeant Flanagan and ten
+troopers at his heels, his purpose deepened and became more fierce.
+I think the change of temperature must have been to blame.  It was
+a chill, bleak evening.  Overhead, across a background of faded blue,
+scudded ragged banks of clouds, the lingering flotsam of the
+shattered rainstorm of yesterday: and a cavalry cloak afforded but
+indifferent protection against the wind that blew hard and sharp
+from the Atlantic.
+
+Coming from the genial warmth of Mr. Souza's parlour into this, the
+evaporation of the wine within him was quickened, its fumes mounted
+now overwhelmingly to his brain, and from comfortably intoxicated
+that he had been hitherto, the lieutenant now became furiously drunk;
+and the transition was a very rapid one.  It was now that he looked
+upon the business he had in hand in the light of a crusade; a sort
+of religious fanaticism began to actuate him.
+
+The souls of these wretched monks must be saved; the temptation to
+self-indulgence, which spelt perdition for them, must be removed
+from their midst. It was a Christian duty.  He no longer though of
+buying the wine and paying for it.  His one aim ow was to obtain
+possession of it not merely a part of it, but all of it - and carry
+it off, thereby accomplishing two equally praiseworthy ends: to
+rescue a conventful of monks from damnation, and to regale the
+much-enduring, half-starved campaigners of the Agueda.
+
+Thus reasoned Mr. Butler with admirable, if drunken, logic.  And
+reasoning thus he led the way over the bridge, and kept straight on
+when he had crossed it, much to the dismay of Sergeant Flanagan,
+who, perceiving the lieutenant's condition, conceived that he was
+missing his way.  This the sergeant ventured to point out, reminding
+his officer that they had come by the road along the river.
+
+"So we did," said Butler shortly.  "Bu' we go back by way of Tavora."
+
+They had no guide.  The one who had conducted them to Regoa had
+returned with O'Rourke, and although Souza had urged upon the
+lieutenant at parting that he should take one of the men from the
+quinta, Butler, with wit enough to see that this was not desirable
+under the circumstances, had preferred to find his way alone.
+
+His confused mind strove now to revisualise the map which he had
+consulted in Souza's parlour.  He discovered, naturally enough, that
+the task was altogether beyond his powers.  Meanwhile night was
+descending.  They were, however, upon the mule track, which went up
+and round the shoulder of a hill, and by this they came at dark upon
+a hamlet.
+
+Sergeant Flanagan was a shrewd fellow and perhaps the most sober
+man in the troop - for the wine had run very freely in Souza's
+kitchen, too, and the men, whilst awaiting their commander's
+pleasure, had taken the fullest advantage of an opportunity that
+was all too rare upon that campaign.  Now Sergeant Flanagan began
+to grow anxious.  He knew the Peninsula from the days of Sir John
+Moore, and he knew as much of the ways of the peasantry of Portugal
+as any man.  He knew of the brutal ferocity of which that peasantry
+was capable.  He had seen evidence more than once of the unspeakable
+fate of French stragglers from the retreating army of Marshal Soult.
+He knew of crucifixions, mutilations and hideous abominations
+practised upon them in these remote hill districts by the merciless
+men into whose hands they happened to fall, and he knew that it was
+not upon French soldiers alone - that these abominations had been
+practised.  Some of those fierce peasants had been unable to
+discriminate between invader and deliverer; to them a foreigner was
+a foreigner and no more.  Others, who were capable of discriminating,
+were in the position of having come to look upon French and English
+with almost equal execration.
+
+It is true that whilst the Emperor's troops made war on the maxim
+that an army must support itself upon the country it traverses,
+thereby achieving a greater mobility, since it was thus permitted
+to travel comparatively light, the British law was that all things
+requisitioned must be paid for.  Wellington maintained this law in
+spite of all difficulties at all times with an unrelaxing rigidity,
+and punished with the utmost vigour those who offended against it.
+Nevertheless breaches were continual; men broke out here and there,
+often, be it said, under stress of circumstances for which the
+Portuguese were themselves responsible; plunder and outrage took
+place and provoked indiscriminating rancour with consequences at
+times as terrible to stragglers from the British army of deliverance
+as to those from the French army of oppressors.  Then, too, there
+was the Portuguese Militia Act recently enforced by Wellington -
+acting through the Portuguese Government - deeply resented by the
+peasantry upon whom it bore, and rendering them disposed to avenge
+it upon such stray British soldiers as might fall into their hands.
+
+Knowing all this, Sergeant Flanagan did not at all relish this night
+excursion into the hill fastnesses, where at any moment, as it seemed
+to him, they might miss their way.  After all, they were but twelve
+men all told, and he accounted it a stupid thing to attempt to take
+a short cut across the hills for the purpose of overtaking an
+encumbered troop that must of necessity be moving at a very much
+slower pace.  This was the way not to overtake but to outdistance.
+Yet since it was not for him to remonstrate with the lieutenant, he
+kept his peace and hoped anxiously for the best.
+
+At the mean wine-shop of that hamlet Mr. Butler inquired his way by
+the simple expedient of shouting "Tavora?" with a strong interrogative
+inflection.  The vintner made it plain by gestures - accompanied by a
+rattling musketry of incomprehensible speech that their way lay
+straight ahead.  And straight ahead they went, following that mule
+track for some five or six miles until it began to slope gently
+towards the plain again.  Below them they presently beheld a cluster
+of twinkling lights to advertise a township.  They dropped swiftly
+down, and in the outskirts overtook a belated bullock-cart, whose
+ungreased axle was arousing the hillside echoes with its plangent
+wail.
+
+Of the vigorous young woman who marched barefoot beside it,
+shouldering her goad as if it were a pikestaff, Mr. Butler inquired
+ - by his usual method - if this were Tavora, to receive an answer
+which, though voluble, was unmistakably affirmative.
+
+"Covento Dominicano? was his next inquiry, made after they had gone
+some little way.
+
+The woman pointed with her goad to a massive, dark building, flanked
+by a little church, which stood just across the square they were
+entering.
+
+A moment later the sergeant, by Mr. Butler's orders, was knocking
+upon the iron-studded main door.  They waited awhile in vain.  None
+came to answer the knock; no light showed anywhere upon the dark
+face of the convent.  The sergeant knocked again, more vigorously
+than before.  Presently came timid, shuffling steps; a shutter
+opened in the door, and the grille thus disclosed was pierced by
+a shaft of feeble yellow light.  A quavering, aged voice demanded
+to know who knocked.
+
+"English soldiers," answered the lieutenant in Portuguese.  "Open!"
+
+A faint exclamation suggestive of dismay was the answer, the
+shutter closed again with a snap, the shuffling steps retreated and
+unbroken silence followed.
+
+"Now wharra devil may this mean?" growled Mr. Butler.  Drugged wits,
+like stupid ones, are readily suspicious.  "Wharra they hatching in
+here that they :are afraid of lerring Bri'ish soldiers see?  Knock
+again, Flanagan.  Louder, man!"
+
+The sergeant beat the door with the butt of his carbine.  The blows
+gave out a hollow echo, but evoked no more answer than if they had
+fallen upon the door of a mausoleum.  Mr. Butler completely lost his
+temper.  "Seems to me that we've stumbled upon a hotbed o' treason.
+Hotbed o' treason!" he repeated, as if pleased with the phrase.
+"That's wharrit is." And he added peremptorily: "Break down the
+door."
+
+"But, sir," began the sergeant in protest, greatly daring.
+
+"Break down the door," repeated Mr. Butler.  Lerrus be after seeing
+wha' these monks are afraid of showing us.  I've a notion they're
+hiding more'n their wine."
+
+Some of the troopers carried axes precisely against such an emergency
+as this.  Dismounting, they fell upon the door with a will.  But the
+oak was stout, fortified by bands of iron and great iron studs; and
+it resisted long.  The thud of the axes and the crash of rending
+timbers could be heard from one end of Tavora to the other, yet from
+the convent it evoked no slightest response.  But presently, as the
+door began to yield to the onslaught, there came another sound to
+arouse the town.  From the belfry of the little church a bell suddenly
+gave tongue upon a frantic, hurried note that spoke unmistakably of
+alarm.  Ding-ding-ding-ding it went, a tocsin summoning the assistance
+of all true sons of Mother Church.
+
+Mr. Butler, however, paid little heed to it.  The door was down at
+last, and followed by his troopers he rode under the massive gateway
+into the spacious close.  Dismounting there, and leaving the woefully
+anxious sergeant and a couple of men to guard the horses, the
+lieutenant led the way along the cloisters, faintly revealed by a
+new-risen moon, towards a gaping doorway whence a feeble light was
+gleaming.  He stumbled over the step into a hall dimly lighted by a
+lantern swinging from the ceiling.  He found a chair, mounted it, and
+cut the lantern down, then led the way again along an endless corridor,
+stone-flagged and flanked on either side by rows of cells.  Many of
+the doors stood open, as if in silent token of the tenants' hurried
+flight, showing what a panic had been spread by the sudden advent of
+this troop.
+
+Mr. Butler became more and more deeply intrigued, more and more
+deeply suspicious that here all was not well.  Why should a community
+of loyal monks take flight in this fashion from British soldiers?
+
+"Bad luck to them!" he growled, as he stumbled on.  "They may hide
+as they will, but it's myself 'll run the shavelings to earth."
+
+They were brought up short at the end of that long, chill gallery
+by closed double doors.  Beyond these an organ was pealing, and
+overhead the clapper of the alarm bell was beating more furiously
+than ever.  All realised that they stood upon the threshold of the
+chapel and that the conventuals had taken refuge there.
+
+Mr. Butler checked upon a sudden suspicion.  "Maybe, after all,
+they've taken us for French," said he.
+
+A trooper ventured to answer him.  "Best let them see we're not
+before we have the whole village about our ears."
+
+"Damn that bell," said the lieutenant, and added: "Put your
+shoulders to the door."
+
+Its fastenings were but crazy ones, and it yielded almost instantly
+to their pressure - yielded so suddenly that Mr. Butler, who himself
+had been foremost in straining against it, shot forward half-a-dozen
+yards into the chapel and measured his length upon its cold flags.
+
+Simultaneously from the chancel came a great cry: "Libera nos,
+Domine! followed by a shuddering murmur of prayer.
+
+The lieutenant picked himself up, recovered the lantern that had
+rolled from his grasp, and lurched forward round the angle that hid
+the chancel from his view.  There, huddled before the main altar
+like a flock of scared and stupid sheep, he beheld the conventuals
+ - some two score of them perhaps and in the dim light of the heavy
+altar lamp above them he could make out the black and white habit
+of the order of St. Dominic.
+
+He came to a halt, raised his lantern aloft, and called to them
+peremptorily:
+
+"Ho, there!"
+
+The organ ceased abruptly, but the bell overhead went clattering on.
+
+Mr. Butler addressed them in the best French he could command:
+"What do you fear?  Why do you flee?  We are friends - English
+soldiers, seeking quarters for the night."
+
+A vague alarm was stirring in him.  It began to penetrate his
+obfuscated mind that perhaps he had been rash, that this forcible
+rape of a convent was a serious matter.  Therefore he attempted
+this peaceful explanation.
+
+>From that huddled group a figure rose, and advanced with a solemn,
+stately grace.  There was a faint swish of robes, the faint rattle
+of rosary beads.  Something about that figure caught the lieutenant's
+attention sharply.  He craned forward, half sobered by the sudden fear
+that clutched him, his eyes bulging in his face.
+
+"I had thought," said a gentle, melancholy woman's voice, "that the
+seals of a nunnery were sacred to British soldiers "
+
+For a moment Mr. Butler seemed to be labouring for breath.  Fully
+sobered now, understanding of his ghastly error reached him at the
+gallop.
+
+"My God!" he gasped, and incontinently turned to flee.
+
+But as he fled in horror of his sacrilege, he still kept his head
+turned, staring over his shoulder at the stately figure of the
+abbess, either in fascination or with some lingering doubt of what
+he had seen and heard.  Running thus, he crashed headlong into a
+pillar, and, stunned by the blow, he reeled and sank unconscious
+to the ground.
+
+This the troopers had not seen, for they had not lingered.
+Understanding on their own part the horrible blunder, they had
+turned even as their leader turned, and they had raced madly back
+the way they had come, conceiving that he followed.  And there
+was reason for their haste other than their anxiety to set a term
+to the sacrilege of their presence.  From the cloistered garden of
+the convent uproar reached them, and the metallic voice of Sergeant
+Flanagan calling loudly for help.
+
+The alarm bell of the convent had done its work.  The villagers were
+up, enraged by the outrage, and armed with sticks and scythes and
+bill-hooks, an army of them was charging to avenge this infamy.  The
+troopers reached the close no more than in time.  Sergeant Flanagan,
+only half understanding the reason for so much anger, but
+understanding that this anger was very real and very dangerous, was
+desperately defending the horses with his two companions against
+the vanguard of the assailants.  There was a swift rush of the
+dragoons and in an instant they were in the saddle, all but the
+lieutenant, of whose absence they were suddenly made conscious.
+Flanagan would have gone back for him, and he had in fact begun to
+issue an order with that object when a sudden surge of the swelling,
+roaring crowd cut off the dragoons from the door through which they
+had emerged.  Sitting their horses, the little troop came together,
+their sabres drawn, solid as a rock in that angry human sea that
+surged about them.  The moon riding now clear overhead irradiated
+that scene of impending strife.
+
+Flanagan, standing in his stirrups, attempted to harangue the mob.
+But he was at a loss what to say that would appease them, nor able
+to speak a language they could understand.  An angry peasant made a
+slash at him with a billhook.  He parried the blow on his sabre, and
+with the flat of it knocked his assailant senseless.
+
+Then the storm burst, and the mob flung itself upon the dragoons.
+
+"Bad cess to you!" cried Flanagan.  "Will ye listen to me, ye
+murthering villains"  Then in despair "Char-r-r-ge!" he roared, and
+headed for the gateway.
+
+The troopers attempted in vain to reach it.  The mob hemmed them
+about too closely, and then a horrid hand-to-hand fight began, under
+the cold light of the moon, in that garden consecrated to peace and
+piety.  Two saddles had been emptied, and the exasperated troopers
+were slashing now at their assailants with the edge, intent upon
+cutting a way out of that murderous press.  It is doubtful if a man
+of them would have survived, for the odds were fully ten to one
+against them.  To their aid came now the abbess.  She stood on a
+balcony above, and called upon the people to desist, and hear her.
+Thence she harangued them for some moments, commanding them to allow
+the soldiers to depart.  They obeyed with obvious reluctance, and
+at last a lane was opened in that solid, seething mass of angry clods.
+
+But Flanagan hesitated to pass down this lane and so depart.  Three
+of his troopers were down by now, and his lieutenant was missing.  He
+was exercised to resolve where his duty lay.  Behind him the mob was
+solid, cutting off the dragoons from their fallen comrades.  An attempt
+to go back might be misunderstood and resisted, leading to a renewal
+of the combat, and surely in vain, for he could not doubt but that the
+fallen troopers had been finished outright.
+
+Similarly the mob stood as solid between him and the door that led to
+the interior of the convent, where Mr. Butler was lingering alive or
+dead.  A number of peasants had already invaded the actual building,
+so that in that connection too the sergeant concluded that there was
+little reason to hope that the lieutenant should have escaped the
+fate his own rashness had invoked.  He had his remaining seven men
+to think of, and he concluded that it was his duty under all the
+circumstances to bring these off alive, and not procure their
+massacre by attempting fruitless quixotries.
+
+So "Forward!" roared the voice of Sergeant Flanagan, and forward
+went the seven through the passage that had opened out before them
+in that hooting, angry mob.
+
+Beyond the convent walls they found fresh assailants awaiting them,
+enemies these, who had not been soothed by the gentle, reassuring
+voice of the abbess.  But here there was more room to manoeuvre.
+
+"Trot!" the sergeant commanded, and soon that trot became a gallop.
+A shower of stones followed them as they thundered out of Tavora,
+and the sergeant himself had a lump as large as a duck-egg on the
+middle of his head when next day he reported himself at Pesqueira
+to Cornet O'Rourke, whom he overtook there.
+
+When eventually Sir Robert Craufurd heard the story of the affair,
+he was as angry as only Sir Robert could be.  To have lost four
+dragoons and to have set a match to a train that might end in a
+conflagration was reason and to spare.
+
+"How came such a mistake to be made?" he inquired, a scowl upon his
+full red countenance.
+
+Mr. O'Rourke had been investigating and was primed with knowledge.
+
+"It appears, sir, that at Tavora there is a convent of Dominican
+nuns as well as a monastery of Dominican friars.  Mr. Butler will
+have used the word 'convento,' which more particularly applies to
+the nunnery, and so he was directed to the wrong house."
+
+"And you say the sergeant has reason to believe that Mr. Butler did
+not survive his folly?"
+
+"I am afraid there can be no hope, sir."
+
+"It's perhaps just as well," said Sir Robert.  "For Lord Wellington
+would certainly have had him shot."
+
+And there you have the true account of the stupid affair of Tavora,
+which was to produce, as we shall see, such far-reaching effects upon
+persons nowise concerned in it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE ULTIMATUM
+
+
+News of the affair at Tavora reached Sir Terence O'Moy, the
+Adjutant-General at Lisbon, about a week later in dispatches from
+headquarters.  These informed him that in the course of the humble
+apology and explanation of the regrettable occurrence offered by
+the Colonel of the 8th Dragoons in person to the Mother Abbess, it
+had transpired that Lieutenant Butler had left the convent alive,
+but that nevertheless he continued absent from his regiment.
+
+Those dispatches contained other unpleasant matters of a totally
+different nature, with which Sir Terence must proceed to deal at
+once; but their gravity was completely outweighed in the adjutant's
+mind by this deplorable affair of Lieutenant Butler's.  Without
+wishing to convey an impression that the blunt and downright O'Moy
+was gifted with any undue measure of shrewdness, it must nevertheless
+be said that he was quick to perceive what fresh thorns the
+occurrence was likely to throw in a path that was already thorny
+enough in all conscience, what a semblance of justification it must
+give to the hostility of the intriguers on the Council of Regency,
+what a formidable weapon it must place in the hands of Principal
+Souza and his partisans.  In itself this was enough to trouble a man
+in O'Moy's position.  But there was more.  Lieutenant Butler happened
+to be his brother-in-law, own brother to O'Moy's lovely, frivolous
+wife.  Irresponsibility ran strongly in that branch of the Butler
+family.
+
+For the sake of the young wife whom he loved with a passionate and
+fearful jealousy such as is not uncommon in a man of O'Moy's
+temperament when at his age - he was approaching his forty-sixth
+birthday - he marries a girl of half his years, the adjutant had
+pulled his brother-in-law out of many a difficulty; shielded him on
+many an occasion from the proper consequences of his incurable
+rashness.
+
+This affair of the convent, however, transcended anything that had
+gone before and proved altogether too much for O'Moy.  It angered
+him as much as it afflicted him.  Yet when he took his head in his
+hands and groaned, it was only his sorrow that he was expressing,
+and it was a sorrow entirely concerned with his wife.
+
+The groan attracted the attention of his military secretary, Captain
+Tremayne, of Fletcher's Engineers, who sat at work at a littered
+writing-table placed in the window recess.  He looked up sharply,
+sudden concern in the strong young face and the steady grey eyes he
+bent upon his chief.  The sight of O'Moy's hunched attitude brought
+him instantly to his feet.
+
+"Whatever is the matter, sir?"
+
+"It's that damned fool Richard," growled O'Moy.  "He's broken out
+again."
+
+The captain looked relieved.  "And is that all?"
+
+O'Moy looked at him, white-faced, and in his blue eyes a blaze of
+that swift passion that had made his name a byword in the army.
+
+"All?" he roared.  "You'll say it's enough, by God, when you hear
+what the fool's been at this time.  Violation of a nunnery, no less."
+And he brought his massive fist down with a crash upon the document
+that had conveyed the information.  "With a detachment of dragoons
+he broke into the convent of the Dominican nuns at Tavora one night
+a week ago.  The alarm bell was sounded, and the village turned out
+to avenge the outrage.  Consequences: three troopers killed, five
+peasants sabred to death and seven other casualties, Dick himself
+missing and reported to have escaped from the convent, but understood
+to remain in hiding - so that he adds desertion to the other crime,
+as if that in itself were not enough to hang him.  That's all, as
+you say, and I hope you consider it enough even for Dick Butler -
+bad luck to him."
+
+"My God!" said Captain Tremayne.
+
+"I'm glad that you agree with me."
+
+Captain Tremayne stared at his chief, the utmost dismay upon his
+fine young face.  "But surely, sir, surely - I mean, sir, if this
+report is correct some explanation -"  He broke down, utterly at
+fault.
+
+"To be sure, there's an explanation.  You may always depend upon a
+most elegant explanation for anything that Dick Butler does.  His
+life is made up of mistakes and explanations."  He spoke bitterly,
+"He broke into the nunnery under a misapprehension, according to the
+account of the sergeant who accompanied him," and Sir Terence read
+out that part of the report.   "But how is that to help him, and at
+such a time as this, with public feeling as it is, and Wellington
+in his present temper about it?  The provost's men are beating the
+country for the blackguard.  When they find him it's a firing party
+he'll have to face."
+
+Tremayne turned slowly to the window and looked down the fair
+prospect of the hillside over a forest of cork oaks alive with fresh
+green shoots to the silver sheen of the river a mile away.  The
+storms of the preceding week had spent their fury - the travail that
+had attended the birth of Spring - and the day was as fair as a day
+of June in England.  Weaned forth by the generous sunshine, the
+burgeoning of vine and fig, of olive and cork went on apace, and the
+skeletons of trees which a fortnight since had stood gaunt and bare
+were already fleshed in tender green.
+
+>From the window of this fine conventual house on the heights of
+Monsanto, above the suburb of Alcantara, where the Adjutant-General
+had taken up his quarters, Captain Tremayne stood a moment considering
+the panorama spread to his gaze, from the red-brown roofs of Lisbon
+on his left - that city which boasted with Rome that it was built
+upon a cluster of seven hills - to the lines of embarkation that
+were building about the fort of St. Julian on his left.  Then he
+turned, facing again the spacious, handsome room with its heavy,
+semi-ecclesiastical furniture, and Sir Terence, who, hunched in his
+chair at the ponderously carved black writing-table, scowled fiercely
+at nothing.
+
+"What are you going to do, sir?" he inquired.
+
+Sir Terence shrugged impatiently and heaved himself up in his chair.
+
+"Nothing," he growled.
+
+"Nothing?"
+
+The interrogation, which seemed almost to cover a reproach, irritated
+the adjutant.
+
+"And what the devil can I do?" he rapped.
+
+"You've pulled Dick out of scrapes before now."
+
+"I have.  That seems to, have been my principal occupation ever
+since I married his sister.  But this time he's gone too far.  What
+can I do?"
+
+"Lord Wellington is fond of you," suggested Captain Tremayne.  He
+was your imperturbable young man, and he remained as calm now as
+O'Moy was excited.  Although by some twenty years the adjutant's
+junior, there was between O'Moy and himself, as well as between
+Tremayne and the Butler family, with which he was remotely connected,
+a strong friendship, which was largely responsible for the captain's
+present appointment as Sir Terence's military secretary.
+
+O'Moy looked at him, and looked away.  "Yes," he agreed.  "But he's
+still fonder of law and order and military discipline, and I should
+only be imperilling our friendship by pleading with him for this
+young blackguard."
+
+"The young blackguard is your brother-in-law," Tremayne reminded
+him.
+
+"Bad luck to you, Tremayne, don't I know it?  Besides, what is there
+I can do?" he asked again, and ended testily: " Faith, man, I don't
+know what you're thinking of."
+
+"I'm thinking of Una," said Captain Tremayne in that composed way
+of his, and the words fell like cold water upon the hot iron of
+O'Moy's anger.
+
+The man who can receive with patience a reproach, implicit or
+explicit, of being wanting in consideration towards his wife is
+comparatively rare, and never a man of O'Moy's temperament and
+circumstances.  Tremayne's reminder stung him sharply, and the more
+sharply because of the strong friendship that existed between
+Tremayne and Lady O'Moy.  That friendship had in the past been a
+thorn in O'Moy's flesh.  In the days of his courtship he had known
+a fierce jealousy of Tremayne, beholding in him for a time a rival
+who, with the strong advantage of youth, must in the end prevail.
+But when O'Moy, putting his fortunes to the test, had declared
+himself and been accepted by Una Butler, there had been an end to
+the jealousy, and the old relations of cordial friendship between
+the men had been resumed.
+
+O'Moy had conceived that jealousy of his to have been slain.  But
+there had been times when from its faint, uneasy stirrings he should
+have taken warning that it did no more than slumber.  Like most warm
+hearted, generous, big-natured men, O'Moy was of a singular humility
+where women were concerned, and this humility of his would often
+breathe a doubt lest in choosing between himself and Tremayne Una
+might have been guided by her head rather than her heart, by ambition
+rather than affection, and that in taking himself she had taken the
+man who could give her by far the more assured and affluent position.
+
+He had crushed down such thoughts as disloyal to his young wife, as
+ungrateful and unworthy; and at such times he would fall into
+self-contempt for having entertained them.  Then Una herself had
+revived those doubts three months ago, when she had suggested that
+Ned Tremayne, who was then at Torres Vedras with Colonel Fletcher,
+was the very man to fill the vacant place of military secretary to
+the adjutant, if he would accept it.  In the reaction of
+self-contempt, and in a curious surge of pride almost as perverse
+s his humility, O'Moy had adopted her suggestion, and thereafter
+ - in the past-three months, that is to say - the unreasonable devil
+of O'Moy's jealousy had slept, almost forgotten.  Now, by a chance
+remark whose indiscretion Tremayne could not realise, since he did
+not so much as suspect the existence of that devil, he had suddenly
+prodded him into wakefulness.  That Tremayne should show himself
+tender of Lady O'Moy's feelings in a matter in which O'Moy himself
+must seem neglectful of them was gall and wormwood to the adjutant.
+He dissembled it, however, out of a natural disinclination to appear
+in the ridiculous role of the jealous husband.
+
+"That," he said, "is a matter that you may safely leave to me," and
+his lips closed tightly upon the words when they were uttered.
+
+"Oh, quite so," said Tremayne, no whit abashed.  He persisted
+nevertheless.  "You know Una's feelings for Dick."
+
+"When I married Una," the adjutant cut in sharply, "I did not marry
+the entire Butler family."  It hardened him unreasonably against
+Dick to have the family cause pleaded in this way.  "It's sick to
+death I am of Master Richard and his escapades.  He can get himself
+out of this mess, or he can stay in it."
+
+"You mean that you'll not lift a hand to help him."
+
+"Devil a finger," said O'Moy.
+
+And Tremayne, looking straight into the adjutant's faintly
+smouldering blue eyes, beheld there a fierce and rancorous
+determination which he was at a loss to understand, but which he
+attributed to something outside his own knowledge that must lie
+between O'Moy and his brother-in-law.
+
+"I am sorry," he said gravely.  "Since that is how you feel, it is
+to be hoped that Dick Butler may not survive to be taken.  The
+alternative would weigh so cruelly upon Una that I do not care to
+contemplate it."
+
+"And who the devil asks you to contemplate it?" snapped O'Moy.  "I
+am not aware that it is any concern of yours at all."
+
+"My dear O'Moy!" It was an exclamation of protest, something between
+pain and indignation, under the stress of which Tremayne stepped
+entirely outside of the official relations that prevailed between
+himself and the adjutant.  And the exclamation was accompanied by
+such a look of dismay and wounded sensibilities that O'Moy,
+meeting this, and noting the honest manliness of Tremayne's bearing
+and countenance; was there and then the victim of reaction.  His
+warm-hearted and impulsive nature made him at once profoundly
+ashamed of himself.  He stood up, a tall, martial figure, and his
+ruggedly handsome, shaven countenance reddened under its tan.  He
+held out a hand to Tremayne.
+
+"My dear boy, I beg your pardon.  It's so utterly annoyed I am that
+the savage in me will be breaking out.  Sure, it isn't as if it were
+only this affair of Dick's.  That is almost the least part of the
+unpleasantness contained in this dispatch.  Here!  In God's name,
+read it for yourself, and judge for yourself whether it's in human
+nature to be patient under so much."
+
+With a shrug and a smile to show that he was entirely mollified,
+Captain Tremayne took the papers to his desk and sat down to con
+them.  As he did so his face grew more and more grave.  Before he
+had reached the end there was a tap at the door.  An orderly
+entered with the announcement that Dom Miguel Forjas had just
+driven up to Monsanto to wait upon the adjutant-general.
+
+"Ha!" said O'Moy shortly, and exchanged a glance with his secretary.
+"Show the gentleman up."
+
+As the orderly withdrew, Tremayne came over and placed the dispatch
+on the adjutant's desk.  "He arrives very opportunely," he said.
+
+"So opportunely as to be suspicious, bedad!" said O'Moy.  He had
+brightened suddenly, his Irish blood quickening at the immediate
+prospect of strife which this visit boded.  "May the devil admire me,
+but there's a warm morning in store for Mr. Forjas, Ned."
+
+"Shall I leave you?"
+
+"By no means."
+
+The door opened, and the orderly admitted Miguel Forjas, the
+Portuguese Secretary of State.  He was a slight, dapper gentleman,
+all in black, from his silk stockings and steel-buckled shoes to his
+satin stock.  His keen aquiline face was swarthy, and the razor had
+left his chin and cheeks blue-black.  His sleek hair was iron-grey.
+A portentous gravity invested him this morning as he bowed with
+profound deference first to the adjutant and then to the secretary.
+
+"Your Excellencies," he said - he spoke an English that was smooth
+and fluent for all its foreign accent "Your Excellencies, this is a
+terrible affair."
+
+"To what affair will your Excellency be alluding?" wondered O'Moy.
+
+"Have you not received news of what has happened at Tavora?  Of the
+violation of a convent by a party of British soldiers?  Of the fight
+that took place between these soldiers and the peasants who went to
+succour the nuns?"
+
+"Oh, and is that all?" said O'Moy.  "For a moment I imagined your
+Excellency referred to other matters.  I have news of more terrible
+affairs than the convent business with which to entertain you this
+morning."
+
+"That, if you will pardon me, Sir Terence, is quite impossible."
+
+"You may think so.  But you shall judge, bedad.  A chair, Dom
+Miguel."
+
+The Secretary of State sat down, crossed his knees and placed his
+hat in his lap.  The other two resumed their seats, O'Moy leaning
+forward, his elbows on the writing-table, immediately facing Senhor
+Forjas.
+
+"First, however," he said, "to deal with this affair of Tavora.  The
+Council of Regency will, no doubt, have been informed of all the
+circumstances.  You will be aware, therefore, that this very
+deplorable business was the result of a misapprehension, and that
+the nuns of Tavora might very well have avoided all this trouble had
+they behaved in a sensible, reasonable manner.  If instead of
+shutting themselves up in the chapel and ringing the alarm bell the
+Mother-Abbess or one of the sisters had gone to the wicket and
+answered the demand of admittance from the officer commanding the
+detachment, he would instantly have realised his mistake and
+withdrawn."
+
+"What does your Excellency suggest was this mistake?" inquired the
+Secretary.
+
+"You have had your report, sir, and surely it was complete.  You
+must know that he conceived himself to be knocking at the gates
+of the monastery of the Dominican fathers."
+
+"Can your Excellency tell me what was this officer's business at the
+monastery of the Dominican fathers?" quoth the Secretary, his manner
+frostily hostile.
+
+"I am without information on that point," O'Moy admitted; "no doubt
+because the officer in question is missing, as you will also have
+been informed.  But I have no reason to doubt that, whatever his
+business may have been, it was concerned with the interests which
+are common alike to the British and the Portuguese nation."
+
+"That is a charitable assumption, Sir Terence."
+
+"Perhaps you will inform me, Dom Miguel, of the uncharitable
+assumption which the Principal Souza prefers," snapped O'Moy,
+whose temper began to simmer.
+
+A faint colour kindled in the cheeks of the Portuguese minister, but
+is manner remained unruffled.
+
+"I speak, sir, not with the voice of Principal Souza, but with that
+of the entire Council of Regency; and the Council has formed the
+opinion, which your own words confirm, that his Excellency Lord
+Wellington is skilled in finding excuses for the misdemeanours of
+the troops under his command."
+
+"That," said O'Moy, who would never have kept his temper in control
+but for the pleasant consciousness that he held a hand of trumps
+with which he would' presently overwhelm this representative of the
+Portuguese Government, "that is an opinion for which the Council
+may presently like to apologise, admitting its entire falsehood."
+
+Senhor Forjas started as if he had been stung.  He uncrossed his
+black silk legs and made as if to rise.
+
+"Falsehood, sir?" he cried in a scandalised voice.
+
+"It is as well that we should be plain, so as to be avoiding all
+misconceptions," said O'Moy.  "You must know, sir, and your Council
+must know, that wherever armies move there must be reason for
+complaint.  The British army does not claim in this respect to be
+superior to others - although I don't say, mark me, that it might
+not claim it with perfect justice.  But we do claim for ourselves
+that our laws against plunder and outrage are as strict as they well
+can be, and that where these things take place punishment inevitably
+follows.  Out of your own knowledge, sir, you must admit that what
+I say is true."
+
+"True, certainly, where the offenders are men from the ranks.  But
+in this case, where the offender is an officer, it does not transpire
+that justice has been administered with the same impartial hand."
+"That, sir," answered O'Moy sharply, testily, "is because he is
+
+missing."
+
+The Secretary's thin lips permitted themselves to curve into the
+faintest ghost of a smile.  "Precisely," he said.
+
+For answer O'Moy, red in the face, thrust forward the dispatch he
+had received relating to the affair.
+
+"Read, sir - read for yourself, that you may report exactly to the
+Council of Regency the terms of the report that has just reached me
+from headquarters.  You will be able to announce that diligent
+search is being made for the offender."
+
+Forjas perused the document carefully, and returned it.
+
+"That is very good," he said, "and the Council will be glad to hear
+of it.  It will enable us to appease the popular resentment in some
+degree.  But it does not say here that when taken this officer will
+not be excused upon the grounds which yourself you have urged to me."
+
+"It does not.  But considering that he has since been guilty of
+desertion, there can be no doubt - all else apart - that the finding
+of a court martial will result in his being shot."
+
+"Very well," said Forjas.  "I will accept your assurance, and the
+Council will be relieved to hear of it." He rose to take his leave.
+"I am desired by the Council to express to Lord Wellington the hope
+that he will take measures to preserve better order among his troops
+and to avoid the recurrence of such extremely painful incidents."
+
+"A moment," said O'Moy, and rising waved his guest back into his
+chair, then resumed his own seat.  Under a more or less calm exterior
+he was a seething cauldron of passion.  "The matter is not quite at
+an end, as your Excellency supposes.  From your last observation, and
+from a variety of other evidence, I infer that the Council is far
+from satisfied with Lord Wellington's conduct of the campaign."
+
+"That is an inference which I cannot venture to contradict.  You
+will understand, General, that I do not speak for myself, but for
+the Council, when I say that many of his measures seem to us not
+merely unnecessary, but detrimental.  The power having been placed
+in the hands of Lord Wellington, the Council hardly feels itself
+able to interfere with his dispositions.  But it nevertheless
+deplores the destruction of the mills and the devastation of the
+country recommended and insisted upon by his lordship.  It feels
+that this is not warfare as the Council understands warfare, and
+the people share the feelings of the Council.  It is felt that it
+would be worthier and more commendable if Lord Wellington were to
+measure himself in battle with the French, making a definite attempt
+to stem the tide of invasion on the frontiers."
+
+"Quite so," said O'Moy, his hand clenching and unclenching, and
+Tremayne, who watched him, wondered how long it would be before
+the storm burst.  "Quite so.  And because the Council disapproves of
+the very measures which at Lord Wellington's instigation it has
+publicly recommended, it does not trouble to see that those measures
+are carried out.  As you say, it does not feel itself able to
+interfere with his dispositions.  But it does not scruple to mark
+its disapproval by passively hindering him at every turn.
+Magistrates are left to neglect these enactments, and because," he
+added with bitter sarcasm, "Portuguese valour is so red-hot and so
+devilish set on battle the Militia Acts calling all men to the
+colours are forgotten as soon as published.  There is no one either
+to compel the recalcitrant to take up arms, or to punish the
+desertions of those who have been driven into taking them up.  Yet
+you want battles, you want your frontiers defended.  A moment, sir!
+there is no need for heat, no need for any words.  The matter may be
+said to be at an end."  He smiled - a thought viciously, be it
+confessed - and then played his trump card, hurled his bombshell.
+"Since the views of your Council are in such utter opposition to the
+views of the Commander-in-Chief, you will no doubt welcome Lord
+Wellington's proposal to withdraw from this country and to advise
+his Majesty's Government to withdraw the assistance which it is
+affording you."
+
+There followed a long spell of silence, O'Moy sitting back in his
+chair, his chin in his hand, to observe the result of his words.
+Nor was he in the least disappointed.  Dom Miguel's mouth fell open;
+the colour slowly ebbed from his cheeks, leaving them an
+ivory-yellow; his eyes dilated and protruded.  He was consternation
+incarnate.
+
+"My God!" he contrived to gasp at last, and his shaking hands
+clutched at the carved arms of his chair.
+
+"Ye don't seem as pleased as I expected," ventured O'Moy.
+
+"But, General, surely . . . surely his Excellency cannot mean to
+take so . . . so terrible a step?"
+
+"Terrible to whom, sir?" wondered O'Moy.
+
+"Terrible to us all."  Forjas rose in his agitation.  He came to
+lean upon O'Moy's writing-table, facing the adjutant.  "Surely, sir,
+our interests - England's interests and Portugal's - are one in
+this."
+
+"To be sure.  But England's interests can be defended elsewhere than
+in Portugal, and it is Lord Wellington's view that they shall be.
+He has already warned the Council of Regency that, since his Majesty
+and the Prince Regent have entrusted him with the command of the
+British and Portuguese armies, he will not suffer the Council or any
+of its members to interfere with his conduct of the military
+operations, or suffer any criticism or suggestion of theirs to alter
+system formed upon mature consideration.  But when, finding their
+criticisms fail, the members of the Council, in their wrongheadedness,
+in their anxiety to allow private interest to triumph over public
+duty, go the length of thwarting the measures of which they do
+not approve, the end of Lord Wellington's patience has been reached.
+I am giving your Excellency his own words.  He feels that it is
+futile to remain in a country whose Government is determined to
+undermine his every endeavour to bring this campaign to a successful
+issue.
+
+"Yourself, sir, you appear to be distressed.  But the Council of
+Regency will no doubt take a different view.  It will rejoice in
+the departure of a man whose military operations it finds so
+detestable.  You will no doubt discover this when you come to lay
+Lord Wellington's decision before the Council, as I now invite you
+to do."
+
+Bewildered and undecided, Forjas stood there for a moment, vainly
+seeking words.  Finally:
+
+"Is this really Lord Wellington's last word?" he asked in tones of
+profoundest consternation.
+
+"There is one alternative - one only," said O'Moy slowly.
+
+"And that?"  Instantly Forjas was all eagerness.
+
+O'Moy considered him.  "Faith, I hesitate to state it."
+
+"No, no.  Please, please."
+
+"I feel that it is idle."
+
+"Let the Council judge.  I implore you, General, let the Council
+judge."
+
+"Very well."  O'Moy shrugged, and took up a sheet of the dispatch
+which lay before him.  "You will admit, sir, I think, that the
+beginning of these troubles coincided with the advent of the
+Principal Souza upon the Council of Regency."  He waited in vain
+for a reply.  Forjas, the diplomat, preserved an uncompromising
+silence, in which presently O'Moy proceeded: "From this, and from
+other evidence, of which indeed there is no lack, Lord Wellington
+has come to the conclusion that all the resistance, passive and
+active, which he has encountered, results from the Principal Souza's
+influence upon the Council.  You will not, I think, trouble to deny
+it, sir."
+
+Forjas spread his hands.  "You will remember, General," he answered,
+in tones of conciliatory regret, "that the Principal Souza represents
+a class upon whom Lord Wellington's measures bear in a manner
+peculiarly hard."
+
+"You mean that he represents the Portuguese nobility and landed
+gentry, who, putting their own interests above those of the State,
+have determined to oppose and resist the devastation of the country
+which Lord Wellington recommends."
+
+"You put it very bluntly," Forjas admitted.
+
+"You will find Lord Wellington's own words even more blunt," said
+O'Moy, with a grim smile, and turned to the dispatch he held.  "Let
+me read you exactly what he writes:
+
+"'As for Principal Souza, I beg you to tell him from me that as I
+have had no satisfaction in transacting the business of this country
+since he has become a member of the Government, no power on earth
+shall induce me to remain in the Peninsula if he is either to remain
+a member of the Government or to continue in Lisbon.  Either he must
+quit the country, or I will do so, and this immediately after I have
+obtained his Majesty's permission to resign my charge.'"
+
+The adjutant put down the letter and looked expectantly at the
+Secretary of State, who returned the look with one of utter dismay.
+Never in all his career had the diplomat been so completely
+dumbfounded as he was now by the simple directness of the man of
+action.  In himself Dom Miguel Forjas was both shrewd and honest.
+He was shrewd enough to apprehend to the full the military genius
+of the British Commander-in-Chief, fruits of which he had already
+witnessed.  He knew that the withdrawal of Junot's army from Lisbon
+two years ago resulted mainly from the operations of Sir Arthur
+Wellesley - as he was then - before his supersession in the supreme
+command of that first expedition, and he more than suspected that but
+for that supersession the defeat of the first French army of invasion
+might have been even more signal.  He had witnessed the masterly
+campaign of 1809, the battle of the Douro and the relentless
+operations which had culminated in hurling the shattered fragments
+of Soult's magnificent army over the Portuguese frontier, thus
+liberating that country for the second time from the thrall of the
+mighty French invader.  And he knew that unless this man and the
+troops under his command remained in Portugal and enjoyed complete
+liberty of action there could be no hope of stemming the third
+invasion for which Massena - the ablest of all the Emperor's marshals
+was now gathering his divisions in the north.  If Wellington were to
+execute his threat and withdraw with his army, Forjas beheld nothing
+but ruin for his country.  The irresistible French would sweep
+forward in devastating conquest, and Portuguese independence would
+be ground to dust under the heel of the terrible Emperor.
+
+All this the clear-sighted Dom Miguel Forjas now perceived.  To do
+him full justice, he had feared for some time that the unreasonable
+conduct of his Government might ultimately bring about some
+such desperate situation.  But it was not for him to voice those
+fears.  He was the servant of that Government, the "mere instrument
+and mouthpiece of the Council of Regency.
+
+"This," he said at length in a voice that was awed, "is an ultimatum."
+
+"It is that," O'Moy admitted readily.
+
+Forjas sighed, shook his dark head and drew himself up like a man who
+has chosen his part.  Being shrewd, he saw the immediate necessity of
+choosing, and, being honest, he chose honestly.
+
+"Perhaps it is as well," he said.
+
+"That Lord Wellington should go?" cried O'Moy.
+
+"That Lord Wellington should announce intentions of going," Forjas
+explained.  And having admitted so much, he now stripped off the
+official mask completely.  He spoke with his own voice and not with
+that of the Council whose mouthpiece he was.  "Of course it will
+never be permitted.  Lord Wellington has been entrusted with the
+defence of the country by the Prince Regent; consequently it is the
+duty of every Portuguese to ensure that at all costs he shall
+continue in that office."
+
+O'Moy was mystified.  Only a knowledge of the minister's inmost
+thoughts could have explained this oddly sudden change of manner.
+
+"But your Excellency understands the terms - the only terms upon
+which his lordship will so continue?"
+
+"Perfectly.  I shall hasten to convey those terms to the Council.
+It is also quite clear - is it not? - that I may convey to my
+Government and indeed publish your complete assurance that the
+officer responsible for the raid on the convent at Tavora will be
+shot when taken?
+
+Looking intently into O'Moy's face, Dom Miguel saw the clear blue
+eyes flicker under his gaze, he beheld a grey shadow slowly
+overspreading the adjutant's ,ruddy cheek.  Knowing nothing of the
+relationship between O'Moy and the offender, unable to guess the
+sources of the hesitation of which he now beheld such unmistakable
+signs, the minister naturally misunderstood it.
+
+"There must be no flinching in this, General," he cried.  "Let me
+speak to you for a moment quite frankly and in confidence, not as
+the Secretary of State of the Council of Regency, but as a
+Portuguese patriot who places his country and his country's welfare
+above every other consideration.  You have issued your ultimatum.
+It may be harsh, it may be arbitrary; with that I have no concern.
+The interests, the feelings of Principal Souza or of any other
+individual, however high-placed, are without weight when the
+interests of the nation hang against them in the balance.  Better
+that an injustice be done to one man than that the whole country
+should suffer.  Therefore I do not argue with you upon the rights
+and wrongs of Lord Wellington's ultimatum.  That is a matter apart.
+Lord Wellington demands the removal of Principal Souza from the
+Government, or, in the alternative, proposes himself to withdraw
+from Portugal.  In the national interest the Government can come
+to only one decision.  I am frank with you, General.  Myself I shall
+stand ranged on the side of the national interest, and what my
+influence in the Council can do it shall do.  But if you know
+Principal Souza at all, you must know that he will not relinquish
+his position without a fight.  He has friends and influence - the
+Patriarch of Lisbon and many of the nobility will be on his side.
+I warn you solemnly against leaving any weapon in his hands."
+
+He paused impressively.  But O'Moy, grey-faced now and haggard,
+waited in silence for him to continue.
+
+"From the message I brought you," Forjas resumed, "you will have
+perceived how Principal Souza has fastened upon this business at
+Tavora to support his general censure of Lord Wellington's conduct
+of the campaign.  That is the weapon to which my warning refers.
+You must - if we who place the national interest supreme are to
+prevail - you must disarm him by the assurance that I ask for.  You
+will perceive that I am disloyal to a member of my Council so that
+I may be loyal to my country.  But I repeat, I speak to you in
+confidence.  This officer has committed a gross outrage, which must
+bring the British army into odium with the people, unless we have
+your assurance that the British army is the first to censure and to
+punish the offender with the utmost rigour.  Give me now, that I
+may publish everywhere, your official assurance that this man will
+be shot, and on my side I assure you that Principal Souza, thus
+deprived of his stoutest weapon, must succumb in the struggle that
+awaits us."
+
+"I hope," said O'Moy slowly, his head bowed, his voice dull and
+even unsteady, "I hope that I am not behind you in placing public
+duty above private consideration.  You may publish my official
+assurance that the officer in question will be . . . shot when
+taken."
+
+"General, I thank you.  My country thanks you.  You may be confident
+of this issue."  He bowed gravely to O'Moy and then to Tremayne.
+"Your Excellencies, I have the honour to wish you good-day."  He was
+shown out by the orderly who had admitted him, and he departed well
+satisfied in his patriotic heart that the crisis which he had always
+known to be inevitable should have been reached at last. Yet, as
+he went, he wondered why the Adjutant-General had looked so downcast,
+why his voice had broken when he pledged his word that justice should
+be done upon the offending British officer.  That, however, was no
+concern of Dom Miguel's, and there was more than enough to engage
+his thoughts when he came to consider the ultimatum to his Government
+with which he was charged.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+LADY O'MOY
+
+
+Across the frontier in the northwest was gathering the third army
+of invasion, some sixty thousand strong, commanded by Marshal
+Massena, Prince of Esslingen, the most skilful and fortunate of all
+Napoleon's generals, a leader who, because he had never known defeat,
+had come to be surnamed by his Emperor "the dear child of Victory."
+
+Wellington, at the head of a British force of little more than one
+third of the French host, watched and waited, maturing his stupendous
+strategic plan, which those in whose interests it had been conceived
+had done so much to thwart.   That plan was inspired by and based
+upon the Emperor's maxim that war should support itself; that an
+army on the march must not be hampered and immobilised by its
+commissariat, but that it must draw its supplies from the country
+it is invading; that it must, in short, live upon that country.
+
+Behind the British army and immediately to the north of Lisbon, in
+an arc some thirty miles long, following the inflection of the hills
+from the sea at the mouth of the Zizandre to the broad waters of the
+Tagus at Alhandra, the lines of Torres Vedras were being constructed
+under the direction of Colonel Fletcher and this so secretly and
+with such careful measures as to remain unknown to British and
+Portuguese alike.  Even those employed upon the works knew of nothing
+save the section upon which they happened to be engaged, and had no
+conception of the stupendous and impregnable whole that was
+preparing.
+
+To these lines it was the British commander's plan to effect a slow
+retreat before the French flood when it should sweep forward, thus
+luring the enemy onward into a country which he had commanded should
+be laid relentlessly waste, that there that enemy might fast be
+starved and afterwards destroyed.  To this end had his proclamations
+gone forth, commanding that all the land lying between the rivers
+Tagus and Mondego, in short, the whole of the country between Beira
+and Torres Vedras, should be stripped naked, converted into a desert
+as stark and empty as the Sahara.  Not a head of cattle, not a grain
+of corn, not a skin of vine, not a flask of oil, not a crumb of
+anything affording nourishment should be left behind.  The very
+mills were to be rendered useless, bridges were to be broken down,
+the houses emptied of all property, which the refugees were to carry
+away with them from the line of invasion.
+
+Such was his terrible demand upon the country for its own salvation.
+But such, as we have seen, was not war as Principal Souza and some
+of his adherents understood it.  They had not the foresight to
+perceive the inevitable result of this strategic plan if effectively
+and thoroughly executed.  They did not even realise that the
+devastation had better be effected by the British in this defensive
+ - and in its results at the same time overwhelmingly offensive -
+manner than by the French in the course of a conquering onslaught.
+They did not realise these things partly because they did not enjoy
+Wellington's full confidence, and in a greater measure because they
+were blinded by self-interest, because, as O'Moy told Forjas, they
+placed private considerations above public duty.  The northern
+nobles whose lands must suffer opposed the measure violently; they
+even opposed the withdrawal of labour from those lands which the
+Militia Act had rendered necessary.  And Antonio de Souza made
+himself their champion until he was broken by Wellington's ultimatum
+to the Council.  For broken he was.  The nation had come to a parting
+of the ways.  It had been brought to the necessity of choosing, and
+however much the Principal, voicing the outcry of his party, might
+argue that the British plan was as detestable and ruinous as a French
+invasion, the nation preferred to place its confidence in the
+conqueror of Vimeiro and the Douro.
+
+Souza quitted the Government and the capital as had been demanded.
+But if Wellington hoped that he would quit intriguing, he misjudged
+his man.  He was a fellow of monstrous vanity, pride and
+self-sufficiency, of the sort than which there is none more dangerous
+to offend.  His wounded pride demanded a salve to be procured at any
+cost.  The wound had been administered by Wellington, and must be
+returned with interest.  So that he ruined Wellington it mattered
+nothing to Antonio de Souza that he should ruin himself and his own
+country at the same time.  He was like some blinded, ferocious and
+unreasoning beast, ready, even eager, to sacrifice its own life so
+that in dying it can destroy its enemy and slake its blood-thirst.
+
+In that mood he passes out of the councils of the Portuguese
+Government into a brooding and secretly active retirement, of which
+the fruits shall presently be shown.  With his departure the Council
+of Regency, rudely shaken by the ultimatum which had driven him
+forth, became more docile and active, and for a season the measures
+enjoined by the Commander-in-Chief were pursued with some show of
+earnestness.
+
+As a result of all this life at Monsanto became easier, ,and O'Moy
+was able to breathe more freely, and to devote more of his time to
+matters concerning the fortifications which Wellington had left
+largely in his charge.  Then, too, as the weeks passed, the shadow
+overhanging him with regard to Richard Butler gradually lifted.  No
+further word had there been of the missing lieutenant, and by the
+end of May both O'Moy and Tremayne had come to the conclusion that
+he must have fallen into the hands of some of the ferocious
+mountaineers to whom a soldier - whether his uniform were British or
+French - was a thing to be done to death.
+
+For his wife's sake O'Moy came thankfully to that conclusion.  Under
+the circumstances it was the best possible termination to the episode.
+She must be told of her brother's death presently, when evidence of
+it was forthcoming; she would mourn him passionately, no doubt, for
+her attachment to him was deep - extraordinarily deep for so shallow
+a woman - but at least she would be spared the pain and shame she
+must inevitably have felt had he been taken and, shot.
+
+Meanwhile, however, the lack of news from him, in another sense,
+would have to be explained to Una sooner or later for a fitful
+correspondence was maintained between brother and sister - and
+O'Moy dreaded the moment when this explanation must be made.
+Lacking invention, he applied to Tremayne for assistance, and
+Tremayne glumly supplied him with the necessary lie that should
+meet Lady O'Moy's inquiries when they came.
+
+In the end, however, he was spared the necessity of falsehood.  For
+the truth itself reached Lady O'Moy in an unexpected manner.  It
+came about a month after that day when O'Moy had first received news
+of the escapade at Tavora.  It was a resplendent morning of early
+June, and the adjutant was detained a few moments from breakfast by
+the arrival of a mail-bag from headquarters, now established at
+Vizeu.  Leaving Captain Tremayne to deal with it, Sir Terence went
+down to breakfast, bearing with him only a few letters of a personal
+character which had reached him from friends on the frontier.
+
+The architecture of the house at Monsanto was of a semiclaustral
+character; three sides of it enclosed a sheltered luxuriant garden,
+whilst on the fourth side a connecting corridor, completing the
+quadrangle, spanned bridgewise the spacious archway through which
+admittance was gained directly from the parklands that sloped gently
+to Alcantara.  This archway, closed at night by enormous wooden
+doors, opened wide during the day upon a grassy terrace bounded by a
+baluster of white marble that gleamed now in the brilliant sunshine.
+It was O'Moy's practice to breakfast out-of-doors in that genial
+climate, and during April, before the sun had reached its present
+intensity, the table had been spread out there upon the terrace.
+Now, however, it was wiser, even in the early morning, to seek the
+shade, and breakfast was served within the quadrangle, under a
+trellis of vine supported in the Portuguese manner by rough-hewn
+granite columns.  It was a delicious spot, cool and fragrant,
+secluded without being enclosed, since through the broad archway
+it commanded a view of the Tagus and the hills of Alemtejo.
+
+Here O'Moy found himself impatiently awaited that morning by his
+wife and her cousin, Sylvia Armytage, more recently arrived from
+England.
+
+"You are very late," Lady O'Moy greeted him petulantly.  Since she
+spent her life in keeping other people waiting, it naturally fretted
+her to discover unpunctuality in others.
+
+Her portrait, by Raeburn, which now adorns the National Gallery,
+had been painted in the previous year.  You will have seen it, or
+at least you will have seen one of its numerous replicas, and you
+will have remarked its singular, delicate, rose-petal loveliness
+ - the gleaming golden head, the flawless outline of face and
+feature, the immaculate skin, the dark blue eyes with their look
+of innocence awakening.
+
+Thus was she now in her artfully simple gown of flowered muslin
+with its white fichu folded across her neck that was but a shade
+less white; thus was she, just as Raeburn had painted her, saving,
+of course, that her expression, matching her words, was petulant.
+
+"I was detained by the arrival of a mail-bag from Vizeu," Sir Terence
+excused himself, as he took the chair which Mullins, the elderly,
+pontifical butler, drew out for him.  "Ned is attending to it, and
+will be kept for a few moments yet."
+
+Lady O'Moy's expression quickened.  "Are there no letters for me?"
+
+"None, my dear, I believe."
+
+"No word from Dick?"  Again there was that note of ever ready
+petulance.  "It is too provoking.  He should know that he must make
+me anxious by his silence.  Dick is so thoughtless - so careless of
+other people's feelings.  I shall write to him severely."
+
+The adjutant paused in the act of unfolding his napkin.  The prepared
+explanation trembled on his lips; but its falsehood, repellent to
+him, was not uttered.
+
+"I should certainly do so, my dear," was all he said, and addressed
+himself to his breakfast.
+
+"What news from headquarters?" Miss Armytage asked him.  "Are things
+going well?"
+
+"Much better now that Principal Souza's influence is at an end.
+Cotton reports that the destruction of the mills in the Mondego
+valley is being carried out systematically."
+
+Miss Armytage's dark, thoughtful eyes became wistful.
+
+"Do you know, Terence," she said, "that I am not without some
+sympathy for the Portuguese resistance to Lord Wellington's decrees.
+They must bear so terribly hard upon the people.  To be compelled
+with their own hands to destroy their homes and lay waste the lands
+upon which they have laboured - what could be more cruel?"
+
+"War can never be anything but cruel," he answered gravely.  "God
+help the people over whose lands it sweeps.  Devastation is often
+the least of the horrors marching in its train."
+
+"Why must war be?" she asked him, in intelligent rebellion against
+that most monstrous and infamous of all human madnesses.
+
+O'Moy proceeded to do his best to explain the unexplainable, and
+since, himself a professional soldier, he could not take the sane
+view of his sane young questioner, hot argument ensued between them,
+to the infinite weariness of Lady O'Moy, who out of self-protection
+gave herself to the study of the latest fashion plates from London
+and the consideration of a gown for the ball which the Count of
+Redondo was giving in the following week.
+
+It was thus in all things, for these cousins represented the two
+poles of womanhood.  Miss Armytage without any of Lady O'Moy's
+insistent and excessive  femininity, was nevertheless feminine to
+the core.  But hers was the Diana type of womanliness.  She was
+tall and of a clean-limbed, supple grace, now emphasised by the
+riding-habit which she was wearing - for she had been in the saddle
+during the hour which Lady, O'Moy had consecrated to the rites of
+toilet and devotions done before her mirror.  Dark-haired, dark-eyed,
+vivacity and intelligence lent her countenance an attraction very
+different from the allurement of her cousin's delicate loveliness.
+And because her countenance was a true mirror of her mind, she
+argued shrewdly now, so shrewdly that she drove O'Moy to entrench
+himself behind generalisations.
+
+"My dear Sylvia, war is most merciful where it is most merciless,"
+he assured her with the Irish gift for paradox.  "At home in the
+Government itself there are plenty who argue as you argue, and who
+are wondering when we shall embark for England.  That is because
+they are intellectuals, and war is a thing beyond the understanding
+of intellectuals.  It is not intellect but brute instinct and brute
+force that will help humanity in such a crisis as the present.
+Therefore, let me tell you, my child, that a government of
+intellectual men is the worst possible government for a nation
+engaged in a war."
+
+This was far from satisfying Miss Armytage.  Lord Wellington
+himself was an intellectual, she objected.  Nobody could deny it.
+There was the work he had done as Irish Secretary, and there was
+the calculating genius he had displayed at Vimeiro, at Oporto, at
+Talavera.
+
+And then, observing her husband to be in distress, Lady O'Moy put
+down her fashion plate and brought up her heavy artillery to relieve
+him.
+
+"Sylvia, dear," she interpolated, "I wonder that you will for ever
+be arguing about things you don't understand."
+
+Miss Armytage laughed good-humouredly.  She was not easily put out
+of countenance.  "What woman doesn't?" she asked.
+
+"I don't, and I am a woman, surely."
+
+"Ah, but an exceptional woman," her cousin rallied her affectionately,
+tapping the shapely white arm that protruded from a foam of lace.
+And Lady O'Moy, to whom words never had any but a literal meaning,
+set herself to purr precisely as one would have expected.
+Complacently she discoursed upon the perfection of her own
+endowments, appealing ever and anon to her husband for confirmation,
+and O'Moy, who loved her with all the passionate reverence which
+Nature working inscrutably to her ends so often inspires in just
+such strong, essentially masculine men for just such fragile and
+excessively feminine women, afforded this confirmation with all the
+enthusiasm of sincere conviction.
+
+Thus until Mullins broke in upon them with the announcement of a
+visit from Count Samoval, an announcement more welcome to Lady
+O'Moy than to either of her companions.
+
+The Portuguese nobleman was introduced.  He had attained to a degree
+of familiarity in the adjutant's household that permitted of his
+being received without ceremony there at that breakfast-table spread
+in the open.  He was a slender, handsome, swarthy man of thirty,
+scrupulously dressed, as graceful and elegant in his movements as a
+fencing master, which indeed he might have been; for his skill with
+the foils was, a matter of pride to himself and notoriety to all the
+world.  Nor was it by any means the only skill he might have boasted,
+for Jeronymo de Samoval was in many things,, a very subtle, supple
+gentleman.  His friendship with the O'Moys, now some three months
+old, had been considerably strengthened of late by the fact that he
+had unexpectedly become one of the most hostile critics of the
+Council of Regency as lately constituted, and one of the most ardent
+supporters of the Wellingtonian policy.
+
+He bowed with supremest grace to the ladies, ventured to kiss the
+fair, smooth hand of his hostess, undeterred by the frosty stare of
+O'Moy's blue eyes whose approval of all men was in inverse proportion
+to their approval of his wife - and finally proffered her the armful
+of early roses that he brought.
+
+"These poor roses of Portugal to their sister from England," said his
+softly caressing tenor voice.
+
+Ye're a poet," said O'Moy tartly.
+
+"Having found Castalia here," said, the Count, "shall I not drink
+its limpid waters?"
+
+"Not, I hope, while there's an agreeable vintage of Port on the
+table.  A morning whet, Samoval?" O'Moy invited him, taking up the
+decanter.
+
+"Two fingers, then - no more.  It is not my custom in the morning.
+But here - to drink your lady's health, and yours, Miss Armytage."
+With a graceful flourish of his glass he pledged them both and
+sipped delicately, then took the chair that O'Moy was proffering.
+
+"Good news, I hear, General.  Antonio de Souza's removal from the
+Government is already bearing fruit.  The mills in the valley of
+the Mondego are being effectively destroyed at last."
+
+"Ye're very well informed," grunted O'Moy, who himself had but
+received the news.  "As well informed, indeed, as I am myself."
+There was a note almost of suspicion in the words, and he was vexed
+that matters which it was desirable be kept screened as much as
+possible from general knowledge should so soon be put abroad.
+
+"Naturally, and with reason," was the answer, delivered with a
+rueful smile.  "Am I not interested?  Is not some of my property
+in question?"  Samoval sighed.  "But I bow to the necessities of
+war.  At least it cannot be said of me, as was said of those whose
+interests Souza represented, that I put private considerations
+above public duty - that is the phrase, I think.  The individual
+must suffer that the nation may triumph.  A Roman maxim, my dear
+General."
+
+"And a British one," said O'Moy, to whom Britain was a second
+Rome.
+
+"Oh, admitted," replied the amiable Samoval.  "You proved it by
+your uncompromising firmness in the affair of Tavora."
+
+"What was that?" inquired Miss Armytage.
+
+"Have you not heard?" cried Samoval in astonishment.
+
+"Of course not," snapped O'Moy, who had broken into a cold
+perspiration.  "Hardly a subject for the ladies, Count."
+
+Rebuked for his intention, Samoval submitted instantly.
+
+"Perhaps not; perhaps not," he agreed, as if dismissing it, whereupon
+O'Moy recovered from his momentary breathlessness.  "But in your
+own interests, my dear General, I trust there will be no weakening
+when this Lieutenant Butler is caught, and - "
+
+"Who?"
+
+Sharp and stridently came that single word from her ladyship.
+
+Desperately O'Moy sought to defend the breach.
+
+"Nothing to do with Dick, my dear.  A fellow named Philip Butler,
+who - "
+
+But the too-well-informed Samoval corrected him.  "Not Philip,
+General - Richard Butler.  I had the name but yesterday from Forjas."
+
+In the scared hush that followed the Count perceived that he had
+stumbled headlong into a mystery.  He saw Lady O'Moy's face turn
+whiter and whiter, saw her sapphire eyes dilating as they regarded
+him.
+
+"Richard Butler!" she echoed.  "What of Richard Butler?  Tell me.
+Tell me at once."
+
+Hesitating before such signs of distress, Samoval looked at O'Moy,
+to meet a dejected scowl.
+
+Lady O'Moy turned to her husband.  "What is it?" she demanded.
+"You know something about Dick and you are keeping it from me.
+Dick is in trouble?"
+
+"He is," O'Moy admitted.  "In great trouble."
+
+"What has he done?  You spoke of an affair at Evora or Tavora, which
+is not to be mentioned before ladies.  I demand to know."  Her
+affection and anxiety for her brother invested her for a moment with
+a certain dignity, lent her a force that was but rarely displayed by
+her.
+
+Seeing the men stricken speechless, Samoval from bewildered
+astonishment, O'Moy from distress, she jumped to the conclusion,
+after what had been said, that motives of modesty accounted for
+their silence.
+
+"Leave us, Sylvia, please," she said.  "Forgive me, dear.  But you
+see they will not mention these things while you are present."  She
+made a piteous little figure as she stood trembling there, her
+fingers tearing in agitation at one of Samoval's roses.
+
+She waited until the obedient and discreet Miss Armytage had passed
+from view into the wing that contained the adjutant's private
+quarters, then sinking limp and nerveless to her chair:
+
+"Now," she bade them, "please tell me."
+
+And O'Moy, with a sigh of regret for the lie so laboriously concocted
+which would never now be uttered, delivered himself huskily of the
+hideous truth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER Ill
+
+COUNT SAMOVAL
+
+
+Miss Armytage's own notions of what might be fit and proper for her
+virginal ears were by no means coincident with Lady O'Moy's.  Thus,
+although you have seen her pass into the private quarters of the
+adjutant's establishment, and although, in fact, she did withdraw
+to her own room, she found it impossible to abide there a prey to
+doubt and misgivings as to what Dick Butler might have done - doubt
+and misgivings, be it understood, entertained purely on Una's
+account and not at all on Dick's.
+
+By the corridor spanning the archway on the southern side of the
+quadrangle, and serving as a connecting bridge between the adjutant's
+private and official quarters, Miss Armytage took her way to Sir
+Terence's work-room, knowing that she would find Captain Tremayne
+there, and assuming that he would be alone.
+
+"May I come in?" she asked him from the doorway.
+
+He sprang to his feet.  "Why, certainly, Miss Armytage."  For so
+imperturbable a young man he seemed oddly breathless in his
+eagerness to welcome her.  "Are you looking for O'Moy?  He left me
+nearly half-an-hour ago to go to breakfast, and I was just about to
+follow."
+
+"I scarcely dare detain you, then."
+
+"On the contrary.  I mean . . . not at all.  But . . . were you
+wanting me?"
+
+She closed the door, and came forward into the room, moving with
+that supple grace peculiarly her own.
+
+"I want you to tell me something, Captain Tremayne, and I want you
+to be frank with me."
+
+"I hope I could never be anything else."
+
+"I want you to treat me as you would treat a man, a friend of your
+own sex."
+
+Tremayne sighed.  He had recovered from the surprise of her coming
+and was again his imperturbable self.
+
+"I assure you that is the last way in which I desire to treat you.
+But if you insist - "
+
+"I do."  She had frowned slightly at the earlier part of his speech,
+with its subtle, half-jesting gallantry, and she spoke sharply now.
+
+"I bow to your will," said Captain Tremayne.
+
+"What has Dick Butler been doing?"
+
+He looked into her face with sharply questioning eyes.
+
+"What was it that happened at Tavora?"
+
+He continued to look at her.  "What have you heard?" he asked at
+last.
+
+"Only that he has done something at Tavora for which the consequences,
+I gather, may be grave.  I am anxious for Una's sake to know what it
+is."
+
+"Does Una know?"
+
+"She is being told now.  Count Samoval let slip just what I have
+outlined.  And she has insisted upon being told everything."
+
+"Then why did you not remain to hear?"
+
+"Because they sent me away on the plea that - oh, on the silly plea
+of my youth and innocence, which were not to be offended."
+
+"But which you expect me to offend?"
+
+"No.  Because I can trust you to tell me without offending."
+
+"Sylvia!"  It was a curious exclamation of satisfaction and of
+gratitude for the implied confidence.  We must admit that it
+betrayed a selfish forgetfulness of Dick Butler and his troubles,
+but it is by no means clear that it was upon such grounds that it
+offended her.
+
+She stiffened perceptibly.  "Really, Captain Tremayne!"
+
+"I beg your pardon," said he.  "But you seemed to imply - "  He
+checked, at a loss.
+
+Her colour rose.  "Well, sir?  What do you suggest that I implied or
+seemed to imply?"  But as suddenly her manner changed.  "I think we
+are too concerned with trifles where the matter on which I have
+sought you is a serious one."
+
+"It is of the utmost seriousness," he admitted gravely.
+
+"Won't you tell me what it is?"
+
+He told her quite simply the whole story, not forgetting to give
+prominence to the circumstances extenuating it in Butler's favour.
+She listened with a deepening frown, rather pale, her head bowed.
+
+"And when he is taken," she asked, "what - what will happen to him?"
+
+"Let us hope that he will not be taken."
+
+"But if he is - if he is?" she insisted almost impatiently.
+
+Captain Tremayne turned aside and looked out of the window.  "I
+should welcome the news that he is dead," he said softly.  "For if
+he is taken he will find no mercy at the hands of his own people."
+
+"You mean that he will be shot?"  Horror charged her voice, dilated
+her eyes.
+
+"Inevitably."
+
+A shudder ran through her, and she covered her face with her halls.
+When she withdrew then Tremayne beheld the lovely countenance
+transformed.  It was white and drawn.
+
+"But surely Terence can save him!" she cried piteously.
+
+He shook his head, his lips tight pressed.  "'There is no man less
+able to do so."
+
+"What do you mean?  Why do you say that?"
+
+He looked at her, hesitating for a, moment, then answered her:
+"'O'Moy has pledged his word to the Portuguese Government that Dick
+Butler shall be shot when taken."
+
+"Terence did that?"
+
+"He was compelled to it.  Honour and duty demanded no less of him.
+I alone, who was present and witnessed the undertaking, know what it
+cost him and what he suffered.  But he was forced to sink all private
+considerations.  It was a sacrifice rendered necessary, inevitable
+for the success of this campaign."  And he proceeded to explain to
+her all the circumstances that were interwoven with Lieutenant
+Butler's ill-timed offence.  "Thus you see that from Terence you
+can hope for nothing.  His honour will not admit of his wavering in
+this matter."
+
+"Honour?"  She uttered the word almost with contempt.  "And what of
+Una?"
+
+"I was thinking of Una when I said I should welcome the news of
+Dick's death somewhere in the hills.  It is the best that can be
+hoped for."
+
+"I thought you were Dick's friend, Captain Tremayne."
+
+"Why, so I have been; so I am.  Perhaps that is another reason why I
+should hope that he is dead."
+
+"Is it no reason why you should do what you to save him?"
+
+He looked at her steadily for an instant, calm under the reproach of
+her eyes.
+
+"Believe me, Miss Armytage, if I saw a way to save him, to do
+anything to help him, I should seize it, both for the sake of my
+friendship for himself and because of my affection for Una.  Since
+you yourself are interested in him, that is an added reason for me.
+But it is one thing to admit willingness to help and another thing
+actually to afford help.  What is there that I can do?  I assure you
+that I have thought of the matter.  Indeed for days I have thought
+of little else.  But I can see no light.  I await events.  Perhaps
+a chance may come."
+
+Her expression had softened.  "I see."  She put out a hand generously
+to ask forgiveness.  "I was presumptuous, and I had no right to speak
+as I did."
+
+He took the hand.  "I should never question your right to speak to
+me in any way that seemed good to you," he assured her.
+
+"I had better go to Una.  She will be needing me, poor child.  I am
+grateful to you, Captain Tremayne, for your confidence and for
+telling me."  And thus she left him very thoughtful, as concerned
+for Una as she was herself.
+
+Now Una O'Moy was the natural product of such treatment.  There
+had ever been something so appealing in her lovely helplessness and
+fragility that all her life others had been concerned to shelter
+her from every wind that blew.  Because it was so she was what she
+was; and because she was what she was it would continue to be so.
+
+But Lady O'Moy at the moment did not stand in such urgent need of
+Miss Armytage as Miss Armytage imagined.  She had heard the appalling
+story of her brother's escapade, but she had been unable to perceive
+in what it was so terrible as it was declared.  He had made a mistake.
+He had invaded the convent under a misapprehension, for which it was
+ridiculous to blame him.  It was a mistake which any man might have
+made in a foreign country.  Lives had been lost, it is true; but that
+was owing to the stupidity of other people - of the nuns who had run
+for shelter when no danger threatened save in their own silly
+imaginations, and of the peasants who had come blundering to their
+assistance where no assistance was required; the latter were the
+people responsible for the bloodshed, since they had attacked the
+dragoons.  Could it be expected of the dragoons that they should
+tamely suffer themselves to be massacred?
+
+Thus Lady O'Moy upon the affair of Tavora.  The whole thing appeared
+to her to be rather silly, and she refused seriously to consider that
+it could have any rave consequences for Dick.  His continued absence
+made her anxious.  But if he should come to be taken, surely his
+punishment would be merely a formal matter; at the worst he might be
+sent home, which would a very good thing, for after all the climate
+of the Peninsula had never quite suited him.
+
+In this fashion she nimbly pursued a train of vitiated logic, passing
+from inconsequence to inconsequence.  And O'Moy, thankful that she
+should take such a view this - mercifully hopeful that the last had
+been heard of his peccant and vexatious brother-in-law - content,
+more than content, to leave her comforted such illusions.
+
+And then, while she was still discussing the matter terms of
+comparative calm, came an orderly to summon him away, so that he
+left her in the company of Samoval.
+
+The Count had been deeply shocked by the discover that Dick Butler
+was Lady O'Moy's brother, and a little confused that he himself in
+his ignorance should have been the means of bringing to her knowledge
+a painful matter that touched her so closely and that hitherto had
+been so carefully concealed from her by her husband.  He was thankful
+that she should take so op optimistic a view, and quick to perceive
+O'Moy's charitable desire to leave her optimism undispelled.  But
+he was no less quick to perceive the opportunities which the
+circumstances afforded him to further a certain deep intrigue upon
+which he was engaged.
+
+Therefore he did not take his leave just yet.  He sauntered with
+Lady O'Moy on the terrace above the wooded slopes that screened the
+village of Alcantara, and there discovered her mind to be even more
+frivolous and unstable than his perspicuity had hitherto suspected.
+Under stress Lady O'Moy could convey the sense that she felt deeply.
+She could be almost theatrical in her displays of emotion.  But
+these were as transient as they were intense.  Nothing that was not
+immediately present to her senses was ever capable of a deep
+impression upon her spirit, and she had the facility characteristic
+of the self-loving and self-indulgent of putting aside any matter
+that was unpleasant.  Thus, easily self-persuaded, as we have seen,
+that this escapade of Richard's was not to be regarded too seriously,
+and that its consequences were not likely to be gave, she chattered
+with gay inconsequence of other things - of the dinner-party last
+week at the house of the Marquis of Minas, that prominent member of
+the council of Regency, of the forthcoming ball to be given by the
+Count of Redondo, of the latest news from home, the latest fashion
+and the latest scandal, the amours of the Duke of York and the
+shortcomings of Mr. Perceval.
+
+Samoval, however, did not intend that the matter of her brother
+should be so entirely forgotten, so lightly treated.  Deliberately
+at last he revived it.
+
+Considering her as she leant upon the granite balustrade, her pink
+sunshade aslant over her shoulder, her flimsy lace shawl festooned
+from the crook of either arm and floating behind her, a wisp of
+cloudy vapour, Samoval permitted himself a sigh.
+
+She flashed him a sidelong glance, arch and rallying.
+
+"You are melancholy, sir - a poor compliment," she told him.
+
+But do not misunderstand her.  Hers was an almost childish coquetry,
+inevitable fruit of her intense femininity, craving ever the worship
+of the sterner sex and the incense of its flattery.  And Samoval,
+after all, young, noble, handsome, with a half-sinister reputation,
+was something of a figure of romance, as a good many women had
+discovered to their cost.
+
+He fingered his snowy stock, and bent upon her eyes of glowing
+adoration.  "Dear Lady O'Moy," his tenor voice was soft and soothing
+as a caress, "I sigh to think that one so adorable, so entirely made
+for life's sunshine and gladness, should have cause for a moment's
+uneasiness, perhaps for secret grief, at the thought of the peril of
+her brother."
+
+Her glance clouded under this reminder.  Then she pouted and made a
+little gesture of impatience.  "Dick is not in peril," she answered.
+"He is foolish to remain so long in hiding, and of course he will
+have to face unpleasantness when he is found.  But to say that he is
+in peril is . . . just nonsense.  Terence said nothing of peril.
+He agreed with me that Dick will probably be sent home.  Surely you
+don't think - "
+
+"No, no."  He looked down, studying his hessians for a moment, then
+his dark eyes returned to meet her own.  "I shall see to it that he
+is in no danger.  You may depend upon me, who ask but the happy
+chance to serve you.  Should there be any trouble, let me know at
+once, and I will see to it that all is well.  Your brother must not
+suffer, since he is your brother.  He is very blessed and enviable
+in that."
+
+She stared at him, her brows knitting.  "But I don't understand."
+
+"Is it not plain?  Whatever happens, you must not suffer, Lady O'Moy.
+No man of feeling, and I least of any, could endure it.  And since
+if your brother were to suffer that must bring suffering to you, you
+may count upon me to shield him."
+
+"You are very good, Count.  But shield him from what?"
+
+"From whatever may threaten.  The Portuguese Government may demand
+in self-protection, to appease the clamour of the people stupidly
+outraged by this affair, that an example shall be made of the
+offender."
+
+"Oh, but how could they?  With what reason?"  She displayed a vague
+alarm, and a less vague impatience of such hypotheses.
+
+He shrugged.  "The people are like that - a fierce, vengeful god to
+whom appeasing sacrifices must be offered from time to time.  If the
+people demand a scapegoat, governments usually provide one.  But be
+comforted."  In his eagerness of reassurance he caught her delicate
+mittened hand in his own, and her anxiety rendering her heedless,
+she allowed it to lie there gently imprisoned.  "Be comforted.  I
+shall be here to guard him.  There is much that I can do and you
+may depend upon me to do it - for your sake, dear lady.  The
+Government will listen to me.  I would not have you imagine me
+capable of boasting.  I have influence with the Government, that
+is all; and I give you my word that so far as the Portuguese
+Government is concerned your brother shall take no harm."
+
+She looked at him for a long moment with moist eyes, moved and
+flattered by his earnestness and intensity of homage.  "I take this
+very kindly in you, sir.  I have no thanks that are worthy," she
+said, her voice trembling a little.  "I have no means of repaying
+you.  You have made me very happy, Count."
+
+He bent low over the frail hand he was holding.
+
+"Your assurance that I have made you happy repays me very fully,
+since your happiness is my tenderest concern.  Believe me, dear
+lady, you may ever count Jeronymo de Samoval your most devoted and
+obedient slave."
+
+He bore the hand to his lips and held it to them for a long moment,
+whilst with heightened colour and eyes that sparkled, more, be it
+confessed, from excitement than from gratitude, she stood passively
+considering his bowed dark head.
+
+As he came erect again a movement under the archway caught his eye,
+and turning he found himself confronting Sir Terence and Miss
+Armytage, who were approaching.  If it vexed him to have been caught
+by a husband notoriously jealous in an attitude not altogether
+uncompromising, Samoval betrayed no sign of it.
+
+With smooth self-possession he hailed O'Moy:
+
+"General, you come in time to enable me to take my leave of you.
+I was on the point of going."
+
+"So I perceived," said O'Moy tartly.  He had almost said: "So I
+had hoped."
+
+His frosty manner would have imposed constraint upon any man less
+master of himself than Samoval.  But the Count ignored it, and
+ignoring it delayed a moment to exchange amiabilities politely with
+Miss Armytage, before taking at last an unhurried and unperturbed
+departure.
+
+But no sooner was he gone than O'Moy expressed himself full frankly
+to his wife.
+
+"I think Samoval is becoming too attentive and too assiduous."
+
+"He is a dear," said Lady O'Moy.
+
+"That is what I mean," replied Sir Terence grimly.
+
+"He has undertaken that if there should be any trouble with the
+Portuguese Government about Dick's silly affair he will put it
+right."
+
+"Oh!" said O'Moy, "that was it?"  And out of his tender consideration
+for her said no more.
+
+But Sylvia Armytage, knowing what she knew from Captain Tremayne,
+was not content to leave the matter there.  She reverted to it
+presently as she was going indoors alone with her cousin.
+
+"Una," she said gently, "I should not place too much faith in Count
+Samoval and his promises."
+
+"What do you mean?"  Lady O'Moy was never very tolerant of advice,
+especially from an inexperienced young girl.
+
+"I do not altogether trust him.  Nor does Terence."
+
+"Pooh!  Terence mistrusts every man who looks at me.  My dear, never
+marry a jealous man," she added with her inevitable inconsequence.
+
+"He is the last man - the Count, I mean - to whom, in your place, I
+should go for assistance if there is trouble about Dick."  She was
+thinking of what Tremayne had told her of the attitude of the
+Portuguese Government, and her clear-sighted mind perceived an
+obvious peril in permitting Count Samoval to become aware of Dick's
+whereabouts should they ever be discovered.
+
+"What nonsense, Sylvia!  You conceive the oddest and most foolish
+notions sometimes.  But of course you have no experience of the
+world."  And beyond that she refused to discuss the matter, nor did
+the wise Sylvia insist.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE FUGITIVE
+
+
+Although Dick Butler might continue missing in the flesh, in the
+spirit he and his miserable affair seem to have been ever present
+and ubiquitous, and a most fruitful source of trouble.
+
+It would be at about this time that there befell in Lisbon the
+deplorable event that nipped in the bud the career of that most
+promising young officer, Major Berkeley of the famous Die-Hards,
+the 29th Foot.
+
+Coming into Lisbon on leave from his regiment, which was stationed
+at Abrantes, and formed part of the division under Sir Rowland Hill,
+the major happened into a company that contained at least one
+member who was hostile to Lord Wellington's conduct of the campaign,
+or rather to the measures which it entailed.  As in the case of the
+Principal Souza, prejudice drove him to take up any weapon that came
+to his hand by means of which he could strike a blow at a system he
+deplored.
+
+Since we are concerned only indirectly with the affair, it may be
+stated very briefly.  The young gentleman in question was a Portuguese
+officer and a nephew of the Patriarch of Lisbon, and the particular
+criticism to which Major Berkeley took such just exception concerned
+the very troublesome Dick Butler.  Our patrician ventured to comment
+with sneers and innuendoes upon the fact that the lieutenant of
+dragoons continued missing, and he went so far as to indulge in a
+sarcastic prophecy that he never would be found.
+
+Major Berkeley, stung by the slur thus slyly cast upon British
+honour, invited the young gentleman to make himself more explicit.
+
+"I had thought that I was explicit enough," says young impudence,
+leering at the stalwart red-coat.  "But if you want it more clearly
+still, then I mean that the undertaking to punish this ravisher of
+nunneries is one that you English have never intended to carry out.
+To save your faces you will take good care that Lieutenant Butler
+is never found.  Indeed I doubt if he was ever really missing."
+
+Major Berkeley was quite uncompromising and downright.  I am afraid
+he had none of the graces that can exalt one of these affairs.
+
+Ye're just a very foolish liar, sir, and you deserve a good caning,"
+was all he said, but the way in which he took his cane from under
+his arm was so suggestive of more to follow there and then that
+several of the company laid preventive hands upon him instantly.
+
+The Patriarch's nephew, very white and very fierce to hear himself
+addressed in terms which - out of respect for his august and powerful
+uncle - had never been used to him before, demanded instant
+satisfaction.  He got it next morning in the shape of half-an-ounce
+of lead through his foolish brain, and a terrible uproar ensued.  To
+appease it a scapegoat was necessary.  As Samoval so truly said, the
+mob is a ferocious god to whom sacrifices must be made.  In this
+instance the sacrifice, of course, was Major Berkeley.  He was broken
+and sent home to cut his pigtail (the adornment still clung to by the
+29th) and retire into private life, whereby the British army was
+deprived of an officer of singularly brilliant promise.  Thus, you
+see, the score against poor Richard Butler - that foolish victim of
+wine and circumstance - went on increasing.
+
+But in my haste to usher Major Berkeley out of a narrative which he
+touches merely at a tangent, I am guilty of violating the
+chronological order of the events.  The ship in which Major Berkeley
+went home to England and the rural life was the frigate Telemachus,
+and the Telemachus had but dropped anchor in the Tagus at the date
+with which I am immediately concerned.  She came with certain stores
+and a heavy load of mails for the troops, and it would be a full
+fortnight before she would sail again for home.  Her officers would
+be ashore during the time, the welcome guests of the officers of the
+garrison, bearing their share in the gaieties with which the latter
+strove to kill the time of waiting for events, and Marcus Glennie,
+the captain of the frigate, an old friend of Tremayne's, was by
+virtue of that friendship an almost daily visitor at the adjutant's
+quarters.
+
+But there again I am anticipating.  The Telemachus came to her
+moorings in the Tagus, at which for the present we may leave her,
+on the morning of the day that was to close with Count Redondo's
+semi-official ball.  Lady O'Moy had risen late, taking from one
+end of the day what she must relinquish to the other, that thus
+fully rested she might look her best that night.  The greater part
+of the afternoon was devoted to preparation.  It was amazing even
+to herself what an amount of detail there was to be considered, and
+from Sylvia she received but very indifferent assistance.  There
+were times when she regretfully suspected in Sylvia a lack of
+proper womanliness, a taint almost of masculinity.  There was to
+Lady O'Moy's mind something very wrong about a woman who preferred
+a canter to a waltz.  It was unnatural; it was suspicious; she was
+not quite sure that it wasn't vaguely immoral.
+
+At last there had been dinner - to which she came a full half-hour
+late, but of so ravishing and angelic an appearance that the sight
+of her was sufficient to mollify Sir Terence's impatience and stifle
+the withering sarcasms he had been laboriously preparing.  After
+dinner - which was taken at six o'clock - there was still an hour
+to spare before the carriage would come to take them into Lisbon.
+
+Sir Terence pleaded stress of work, occasioned by the arrival of the
+Telemachus that morning, and withdrew with Tremayne to the official
+quarters, to spend that hour in disposing of some of the many matters
+awaiting his attention.  Sylvia, who to Lady O'Moy's exasperation
+seemed now for the first time to give a thought to what she should
+wear that night, went off in haste to gown herself, and so Lady O'Moy
+was left to her own resources - which I assure you were few indeed.
+
+The evening being calm and warm, she sauntered out into the open.
+She was more or less annoyed with everybody - with Sir Terence and
+Tremayne for their assiduity to duty, and with Sylvia for postponing
+all thought of dressing until this eleventh hour, when she might
+have been better employed in beguiling her ladyship's loneliness.
+In this petulant mood, Lady O'Moy crossed the quadrangle, loitered
+a moment by the table and chairs placed under the trellis, and
+considered sitting there to await the others.  Finally, however,
+attracted by the glory of the sunset behind the hills towards
+Abrantes, she sauntered out on to the terrace, to the intense
+thankfulness of a poor wretch who had waited there for the past ten
+hours in the almost despairing hope that precisely such a thing
+might happen.
+
+She was leaning upon the balustrade when a rustle in the pines below
+drew her attention.  The rustle worked swiftly upwards and round to
+the bushes on her right, and her eyes, faintly startled, followed
+its career, what time she stood tense and vaguely frightened.
+
+Then the bushes parted and a limping figure that leaned heavily upon
+a stick disclosed itself; a shaggy, red-bearded man in the garb of a
+peasant; and marvel of marvels! - this figure spoke her name sharply,
+warningly almost, before she had time to think of screaming.
+
+"Una!  Una!  Don't move!"
+
+The voice was certainly the voice of Mr. Butler.  But how came that
+voice into the body of this peasant?  Terrified, with drumming
+pulses, yet obedient to the injunction, she remained without speech
+or movement, whilst crouching so as to keep below the level of the
+balustrade the man crept forward until he was immediately before and
+below her.
+
+She stared into that haggard face, and through the half-mask of
+stubbly beard gradually made out the features of her brother.
+
+"Richard!"  The name broke from her in a scream.
+
+"'Sh!"  He waved his hands in wild alarm to repress her.  "For God's
+sake, be quiet!  It's a ruined man I am they find me here.  You'll
+have heard what's happened to me?"
+
+She nodded, and uttered a half-strangled "Yes."
+
+"Is there anywhere you can hide me?  Can you get me into the house
+without being seen? I am almost starving, and my leg is on fire.  I
+was wounded three days ago to make matters worse than they were
+already.  I have been lying in the woods there watching for the
+chance to find you alone since sunrise this morning, and it's devil
+a bite or sup I've had since this time yesterday."
+
+"Poor, poor Richard!"  She leaned down towards him in an attitude of
+compassionate, ministering grace.  "But why?  Why did you not come
+up to the house and ask for me?  No one would have recognised you."
+
+"Terence would if he had seen me."
+
+"But Terence wouldn't have mattered.  Terence will help you."
+
+"Terence!"  He almost laughed from excess of bitterness, labouring
+under an egotistical sense of wrong.  "He's the last man I should
+wish to meet, as I have good reason to know.  If it hadn't been for
+that I should have come to you a month ago - immediately after this
+trouble of mine.  As it is, I kept away until despair left me no
+other choice.  Una, on no account a word of my presence to Terence."
+
+"But . . . he's my husband!"
+
+"Sure, and he's also adjutant-general, and if I know him at all he's
+the very man to place official duty and honour and all the rest of
+it above family considerations."
+
+"Oh, Richard, how little you know Terence!  How wrong you are to
+misjudge him like this!"
+
+"Right or wrong, I'd prefer not to take the risk.  It might end in my
+being shot one fine morning before long."
+
+" Richard!"
+
+"For God's sake, less of your Richard!  It's all the world will be
+hearing you.  Can you hide me, do you think, for a day or two?  If
+you can't, I'll be after shifting for myself as best I can.  I've
+been playing the part of an English overseer from Bearsley's wine
+farm, and it has brought me all the way from the Douro in safety.
+But the strain of it and the eternal fear of discovery are beginning
+to break me.  And now there's this infernal wound.  I was assaulted
+by a footpad near Abrantes, as if I was worth robbing.  Anyhow I
+gave the fellow more than I took.  Unless I have rest I think I
+shall go mad and give myself up to the provost-marshal to be shot
+and done with."
+
+"Why do you talk of being shot?  You have done nothing to deserve
+that.  Why should you fear it?"
+
+Now Mr. Butler was aware - having gathered the information lately
+on his travels - of the undertaking given by the British to the
+Council of Regency with regard to himself.  But irresponsible
+egotist though he might be, yet in common with others he was
+actuated by the desire which his sister's fragile loveliness
+inspired in every one to spare her unnecessary pain or anxiety.
+
+"It's not myself will take any risks," he said again.  "We are at
+war, and when men are at war killing becomes a sort of habit, and
+one life more or less is neither here nor there."  And upon that
+he renewed his plea that she should hide him if she could and that
+on no account should she tell a single soul - and Sir Terence least
+of any - of his presence.
+
+Having driven him to the verge of frenzy by the waste of precious
+moments in vain argument, she gave him at last the promise he
+required.  "Go back to the bushes there," she bade him, "and wait
+until I come for you.  I will make sure that the coast is clear."
+
+Contiguous to her dressing-room, which overlooked the quadrangle,
+there was a small alcove which had been converted into a storeroom
+for the array of trunks and dress boxes that Lady O'Moy had brought
+from England.  A door opening directly from her dressing room
+communicated with this alcove, and of that door Bridget, her maid,
+was in possession of the key.
+
+As she hurried now indoors she happened to meet Bridget on the
+stairs.  The maid announced herself on her way to supper in the
+servants' quarters, and apologised for her presumption in assuming
+that her ladyship would no further require her services that evening.
+But since it fell in so admirably with her ladyship's own wishes, she
+insisted with quite unusual solicitude, with vehemence almost, that
+Bridget should proceed upon her way.
+
+"Just give me the key of the alcove," she said.  "There are one or
+two things I want to get."
+
+"Can't I get them, your ladyship?"
+
+"Thank you, Bridget.  I prefer to get them, myself."
+
+There was no more to be said.  Bridget produced a bunch of keys,
+which she surrendered to her mistress, having picked out for her the
+one required.
+
+Lady O'Moy went up, to come down again the moment that Bridget had
+disappeared.  The quadrangle was deserted, the household disposed
+of, and it wanted yet half-an-hour to the time for which the
+carriage was ordered.  No moment could have been more propitious.
+But in any case no concealment was attempted - since, if detected
+it must have provoked suspicions hardly likely to be aroused in any
+other way.
+
+When Lady O'Moy returned indoors in the gathering dusk she was
+followed at a respectful distance by the limping fugitive, who might,
+had he been seen, have been supposed some messenger, or perhaps
+some person employed about the house or gardens coming to her
+ladyship for instructions.  No one saw them, however, and they gained
+the dressing-room and thence the alcove in complete safety.
+
+There, whilst Richard, allowing his exhaustion at last to conquer
+him, sank heavily down upon one of his sister's many trunks,
+recking nothing of the havoc wrought in its priceless contents, her
+ladyship all a-tremble collapsed limply upon another.
+
+But there was no rest for her.  Richard's wound required attention,
+and he was faint for want of meat and drink.  So having procured
+him the wherewithal to wash and dress his hurt - a nasty knife-slash
+which had penetrated to the bone of his thigh, the very sight of
+which turned her ladyship sick and faint - she went to forage for
+him in a haste increased by the fact that time was growing short.
+
+On the dining-room sideboard, from the remains of dinner, she found
+and furtively abstracted what she needed - best part of a roast
+chicken, a small loaf and a half-flask of Collares.  Mullins, the
+butler, would no doubt be exercised presently when he discovered
+the abstraction.  Let him blame one of the footmen, Sir Terence's
+orderly, or the cat.  It mattered nothing to Lady O'Moy.
+
+Having devoured the food and consumed the wine, Richard's exhaustion
+assumed the form of a lethargic torpor.  To sleep was now his
+overmastering desire.  She fetched him rugs and pillows, and he
+made himself a couch upon the floor.  She had demurred, of course,
+when he himself had suggested this.  She could not conceive of any
+one sleeping anywhere but in a bed.  But Dick made short work of
+that illusion.
+
+"Haven't I been in hiding for the last six weeks?" he asked her.
+"And haven't I been thankful to sleep in a ditch?  And wasn't I
+campaigning before that?  I tell you I couldn't sleep in a bed.
+It's a habit I've lost entirely."
+
+Convinced, she gave way.
+
+"We'll talk to-morrow, Una," he promised her, as he stretched
+himself luxuriously upon that hard couch.  "But meanwhile, on your
+life, not a word to any one.  You understand?"
+
+"Of course I understand, my poor Dick."
+
+She stooped to kiss him.  But he was fast asleep already.
+
+She went out and locked the door, and when, on the point of setting
+out for Count Redondo's, she returned the bunch of keys to Bridget
+the key of the alcove was missing.
+
+"I shall require it again in the morning, Bridget," she explained
+lightly.  And then added kindly, as it seemed: "Don't wait for me,
+child.  Get to bed.  I shall be late in coming home, and I shall
+not want you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+MISS ARMYTAGE'S PEARLS
+
+
+Lady O'Moy and Miss Armytage drove alone together into Lisbon.
+The adjutant, still occupied, would follow as soon as he possibly
+could, whilst Captain Tremayne would go on directly from the
+lodgings which he shared in Alcantara with Major Carruthers - also
+of the adjutant's staff - whither he had ridden to dress some twenty
+minutes earlier.
+
+"Are you ill, Una?" had been Sylvia's concerned greeting of her
+cousin when she came within the range of the carriage lamps.  "You
+are pale as a ghost."  To this her ladyship had replied mechanically
+that a slight headache troubled her.
+
+But now that they sat side by side in the well upholstered carriage
+Miss Armytage became aware hat her companion was trembling.
+
+"Una, dear, whatever is the matter?"
+
+Had it not been for the dominant fear that the shedding of tears
+would render her countenance unsightly, Lady O'Moy would have
+yielded to her feelings and wept.  Heroically in the cause of her
+own flawless beauty she conquered the almost overmastering
+inclination.
+
+"I - I have been so troubled about Richard," she faltered.  "It is
+preying upon my mind."
+
+"Poor dear!"  In sheer motherliness Miss Armytage put an arm about
+her cousin and drew her close.  "We must hope for the best."
+
+Now if you have understood anything of the character of Lady O'Moy
+you will have understood that the burden of a secret was the last
+burden that such a nature was capable of carrying,.  It was because
+Dick was fully aware of this that he had so emphatically and
+repeatedly impressed upon her the necessity for saying not a word
+to any one of his presence.  She realised in her vague way - or
+rather she believed it since he had assured her - that there would
+be grave danger to him if he were discovered.  But discovery was
+one thing, and the sharing of a confidence as to his presence
+another.  That confidence must certainly be shared.
+
+Lady O'Moy was in an emotional maelstrom that swept her towards a
+cataract.  The cataract might inspire her with dread, standing as
+it did for death and disaster, but the maelstrom was not to be
+resisted.  She was helpless in it, unequal to breasting such strong
+waters, she who in all her futile, charming life had been borne
+snugly in safe crafts that were steered by others.
+
+Remained but to choose her confidant.  Nature suggested Terence.
+But it was against Terence in particular that she had been warned.
+Circumstance now offered Sylvia Armytage.  But pride, or vanity if
+you prefer it, denied her here.  Sylvia was an inexperienced young
+girl, as she herself had so often found occasion to remind her cousin.
+Moreover, she fostered the fond illusion that Sylvia looked to her
+for precept, that upon Sylvia's life she exercised a precious guiding
+influence.  How, then, should the supporting lean upon the supported?
+Yet since she must, there and then, lean upon something or succumb
+instantly and completely, she chose a middle course, a sort of
+temporary assistance.
+
+"I have been imagining things," she said.  "It may be a premonition,
+I don't know.  Do you believe in premonitions, Sylvia?"
+
+"Sometimes," Sylvia humoured her.
+
+"I have been imagining that if Dick is hiding, a fugitive, he might
+naturally come to me for help.  I am fanciful, perhaps," she added
+hastily, lest she should have said too much.  "But there it is.
+All day the notion has clung to me, and I have been asking myself
+desperately what I should do in such a case."
+
+"Time enough to consider it when it happens, Una.  After all - "
+
+"I know," her ladyship interrupted on that ever-ready note of
+petulance of hers.  "I know, of course.  But I think I should be
+easier in my mind if I could find an answer to my doubt.  If I knew
+what to do, to whom to appeal for assistance, for I am afraid that
+I should be very helpless myself.  There is Terence, of course.  But
+I am a little afraid of Terence.  He has got Dick out of so many
+scrapes, and he is so impatient of poor Dick.  I am afraid he doesn't
+understand him, and so I should be a little frightened of appealing
+to Terence again."
+
+"No," said Sylvia gravely, "I shouldn't go to Terence.  Indeed he
+is the last man to whom I should go."
+
+"You say that too!" exclaimed her ladyship.
+
+"Why?" quoth Sylvia sharply.  "Who else has said it?"
+
+There was a brief pause in which Lady O'Moy shuddered.  She had
+been so near to betraying herself.  How very quick and shrewd
+Sylvia was!  She made, however, a good recovery.
+
+"Myself, of course.  It is what I have thought myself.  There is
+Count Samoval.  He promised that if ever any such thing happened he
+would help me.  And he assured me I could count upon him.  I think
+it may have been his offer that made me fanciful."
+
+"I should go to Sir Terence before I went to Count Samoval.  By
+which I mean that I should not go to Count Samoval at all under any
+circumstances.  I do not trust him."
+
+"You said so once before, dear," said Lady O'Moy.
+
+"And you assured me that I spoke out of the fullness of my ignorance
+and inexperience."
+
+"Ah, forgive me."
+
+"There is nothing to forgive.  No doubt you were right.  But remember
+that instinct is most alive in the ignorant and inexperienced, and
+that instinct is often a surer guide than reason.  Yet if you want
+reason, I can supply that too.  Count Samoval is the intimate friend
+of the Marquis of Minas, who remains a member of the Government, and
+who next to the Principal Souza was, and no doubt is, the most bitter
+opponent of the British policy in Portugal.  Yet Count Samoval, one
+of the largest landowners in the north, and the nobleman who has
+perhaps suffered most severely from that policy, represents himself
+as its most vigorous supporter."
+
+Lady O'Moy listened in growing amazement.  Also she was a little
+shocked.  It seemed to her almost indecent that a young girl should
+know so much about politics - so much of which she herself, a married
+woman, and the wife of the adjutant-general, was completely in
+ignorance.
+
+"Save us, child!" she ejaculated.  "You are so extraordinarily
+informed."
+
+"I have talked to Captain Tremayne," said Sylvia.  "He has explained
+all this."
+
+"Extraordinary conversation for a young man to hold with a young
+girl," pronounced her ladyship.  "Terence never talked of such
+things to me."
+
+"Terence was too busy making love to you," said Sylvia, and there
+was the least suspicion of regret in her almost boyish voice.
+
+"That may account for it," her ladyship confessed, and fell for a
+moment into consideration of that delicious and rather amusing past,
+when O'Moy's ferocious hesitancy and flaming jealousy had delighted
+her with the full perception of her beauty's power.  With a rush,
+however, the present forced itself back upon her notice.  "But I
+still don't see why Count Samoval should have offered me assistance
+if he did not intend to grant it when the time came."
+
+Sylvia explained that it was from the Portuguese Government that
+the demand for justice upon the violator of the nunnery at Tavora
+emanated, and that Samoval's offer might be calculated to obtain him
+information of Butler's whereabouts when they became known, so that
+he might surrender him to the Government.
+
+"My dear!" Lady O'Moy was shocked almost beyond expression.  "How
+you must dislike the man to suggest that he could be such a - such
+a Judas."
+
+"I do not suggest that he could be.  I warn you never to run the
+risk of testing him.  He maybe as honest in this matter as he
+pretends.  But if ever Dick were to come to you for help, you must
+take no risk."
+
+The phrase was a happier one than Sylvia could suppose.  It was
+almost the very phrase that Dick himself had used; and its
+reiteration by another bore conviction to her ladyship.
+
+"To whom then should I go?" she demanded plaintively.  And Sylvia,
+speaking with knowledge, remembering the promise that Tremayne
+had given her, answered readily: "There is but one man whose
+assistance you could safely seek.  Indeed I wonder you should not
+have thought of him in the first instance, since he is your own, as
+well as Dick's lifelong friend."
+
+"Ned Tremayne?"  Her ladyship fell into thought.  "Do you know, I
+am a little afraid of Ned.  He is so very sober and cold.  You do
+mean Ned - don't you?"
+
+"Whom else should I mean?"
+
+"But what could he do?"
+
+"My dear, how should I know?  But at least I know - for I think I
+can be sure of this - that he will not lack the will to help you;
+and to have the will, in a man like Captain Tremayne, is to find
+a way."
+
+The confident, almost respectful, tone in which she spoke arrested
+her ladyship's attention.  It promptly sent her off at a tangent:
+
+"You like Ned, don't you, dear?"
+
+"I think everybody likes him."  Sylvia's voice was now studiously
+cold.
+
+"Yes; but I don't mean quite in that way."  And then before the
+subject could be further pursued the carriage rolled to a standstill
+in a flood of light from gaping portals, scattering a mob of curious
+sight-seers intersprinkled with chairmen, footmen, linkmen and all
+the valetaille that hovers about the functions of the great world.
+
+The carriage door was flung open and the steps let down.  A brace
+of footmen, plump as capons, in gorgeous liveries, bowed powdered
+heads and proffered scarlet arms to assist the ladies to alight.
+
+Above in the crowded, spacious, colonnaded vestibule at the foot of
+the great staircase they were met-by Captain Tremayne, who had just
+arrived with Major Carruthers, both resplendent in full dress, and
+Captain Marcus Glennie of the Telemachus in blue and gold.  "Together
+they ascended the great staircase, lined with chatting groups, and
+ablaze with uniforms, military, naval and diplomatic, British and
+Portuguese, to be welcomed above by the Count and Countess of
+Redondo.
+
+Lady O'Moy's entrance of the ballroom produced the effect to which
+custom had by now inured her.  Soon she found herself the centre of
+assiduous attentions.  Cavalrymen in blue, riflemen in green,
+scarlet officers of the line regiments, winged light-infantrymen,
+rakishly pelissed, gold-braided hussars and all the smaller fry of
+court and camp fluttered insistently about her.  It was no novelty
+to her who had been the recipient of such homage since her first
+ball five years ago at Dublin Castle, and yet the wine of it had
+gone ever to her head a little.  But to-night she was rather pale
+and listless, her rose-petal loveliness emphasised thereby perhaps.
+An unusual air of indifference hung about her as she stood there
+amid this throng of martial jostlers who craved the honour of a
+dance and at whom she smiled a thought mechanically over the top
+of her slowly moving fan.
+
+The first quadrille impended, and the senior service had carried off
+the prize from under the noses of the landsmen.  As she was swept
+away by Captain Glennie, she came face to face with Tremayne, who
+was passing with Sylvia on his arm.  She stopped and tapped his arm
+with her fan.
+
+"You haven't asked to dance, Ned," she reproached him.
+
+"With reluctance I abstained."
+
+"But I don't intend that you shall.  I have something to say to you."
+He met her glance, and found it oddly serious - most oddly serious
+for her.  Responding to its entreaty, he murmured a promise in
+courteous terms of delight at so much honour.
+
+But either he forgot the promise or did not conceive its redemption
+to be an urgent matter, for the quadrille being done he sauntered
+through one of the crowded ante-rooms with Miss Armytage and brought
+her to the cool of a deserted balcony above the garden.  Beyond this
+was the river, agleam with the lights of the British fleet that rode
+at anchor on its placid bosom.
+
+"Una will be waiting for you," Miss Armytage reminded him.  She was
+leaning on the sill of the balcony.  Standing erect beside her, he
+considered the graceful profile sharply outlined against a background
+of gloom by the light from the windows behind them.  A heavy curl of
+her dark hair lay upon a neck as flawlessly white as the rope of
+pearls that swung from it, with which her fingers were now idly
+toying.  It were difficult to say which most engaged his thoughts:
+the profile; the lovely line of neck; or the rope of pearls.  These
+latter were of price, such things as it might seldom - and then only
+by sacrifice - lie within the means of Captain Tremayne to offer to
+the woman whom he took to wife.
+
+He so lost himself upon that train of thought that she was forced to
+repeat her reminder.
+
+"Una will be waiting for you, Captain Tremayne."
+
+"Scarcely as eagerly," he answered, "as others will be waiting for
+you."
+
+She laughed amusedly, a frank, boyish laugh.  "I thank you for not
+saying as eagerly as I am waiting for others."
+
+"Miss Armytage, I have ever cultivated truth."
+
+"But we are dealing with surmise."
+
+"Oh, no surmise at all.  I speak of what I know."
+
+"And so do I"  And yet again she repeated: "Una will be waiting for
+you."
+
+He sighed, and stiffened slightly.  "Of course if you insist," said
+he, and made ready to reconduct her.
+
+She swung round as if to go, but checked, and looked him frankly in
+the eyes.
+
+"Why will you for ever be misunderstanding me?" she challenged him.
+
+"Perhaps it is the inevitable result of my overanxiety to understand."
+
+"Then begin by taking me more literally, and do not read into my
+words more meaning than I intend to give them.  When I say Una is
+waiting for you, I state a simple fact, not a command that you shall
+go to her.  Indeed I want first to talk to you."
+
+"If I might take you literally now - "
+
+"Should I have suffered you to bring me here if I did not?"
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said, contrite, and something shaken out of
+his imperturbability.  "Sylvia," he ventured very boldly, and there
+checked, so terrified as to be a shame to his brave scarlet,
+gold-laced uniform.
+
+"Yes?" she said.  She was leaning upon the balcony again, and in
+such a way now that he could no longer see her profile.  But her
+fingers were busy at the pearls once more, and this he saw, and
+seeing, recovered himself.
+
+"You have something to say to me?" he questioned in his smooth,
+level voice.
+
+Had he not looked away as he spoke he might have observed that her
+fingers tightened their grip of the pearls almost convulsively, as
+if to break the rope.  It was a gesture slight and trivial, yet
+arguing perhaps vexation.  But Tremayne did not see it, and had he
+seen it, it is odds it would have conveyed no message to him.
+
+There fell a long pause, which he did not venture to break.  At
+last she spoke, her voice quiet and level as his own had been.
+
+"It is about Una."
+
+"I had hoped," he spoke very softly, "that it was about yourself."
+
+She flashed round upon him almost angrily.  "Why do you utter these
+set speeches to me?" she demanded.  And then before he could
+recover from his astonishment to make any answer she had resumed a
+normal manner, and was talking quickly.
+
+She told him of Una's premonitions about Dick.  Told him, in short,
+what it was that Una desired to talk to him about.
+
+
+"You bade her come to me?" he said.
+
+"Of course.  After your promise to me."
+
+He was silent and very thoughtful for a moment.  "I wonder that
+Una needed to be told that she had in me a friend," he said slowly.
+
+"I wonder to whom she would have gone on her own impulse?"
+
+"To Count Samoval," Miss Armytage informed him.
+
+"Samoval!" he rapped the name out sharply.  He was clearly angry.
+"That man!  I can't understand why O'Moy should suffer him about the
+house so much."
+
+"Terence, like everybody else, will suffer anything that Una wishes."
+
+
+"Then Terence is more of a fool than I ever suspected."
+
+There was a brief pause.  "If you were to fail Una in this," said
+Miss Armytage presently, "I mean that unless you yourself give her
+the assurance that you are ready to do what you can for Dick, should
+the occasion arise, I am afraid that in her present foolish mood she
+may still avail herself of Count Samoval.  That would be to give
+Samoval a hold upon her; and I tremble to think what the consequences
+might be.  That man is a snake - a horror."
+
+The frankness with which she spoke was to Tremayne full evidence of
+her anxiety.  He was prompt to allay it.
+
+"She shall have that assurance this very evening," he promised.
+
+"I at least have not pledged my word to anything or to any one.
+Even so," he added slowly, "the chances of my services being ever
+required grow more slender every day.  Una may be full of
+premonitions about Dick.  But between premonition and event there
+is something of a gap."
+
+Again a pause, and then: "I am glad," said Miss Armytage, "to think
+that Una has a friend, a trustworthy friend, upon whom she can
+depend.  She is so incapable of depending upon herself.  All her
+life there has been some one at hand to guide her and screen her
+from unpleasantness until she has remained just a sweet, dear child
+to be taken by the hand in every dark lane of life."
+
+"But she has you, Miss Armytage."
+
+"Me?"  Miss Armytage spoke deprecatingly.  "I don't think I am a
+very able or experienced guide.  Besides, even such as I am, she may
+not have me very long now.  I had letters from home this morning.
+Father is not very well, and mother writes that he misses me.  I am
+thinking of returning soon."
+
+"But - but you have only just come!"
+
+She brightened and laughed at the dismay in his voice.  "Indeed, I
+have been here six weeks."  She looked out over the shimmering
+moonlit waters of the Tagus and the shadowy, ghostly ships of the
+British fleet that rode at anchor there, and her eyes were wistful.
+Her fingers, with that little gesture peculiar to her in moments
+of constraint, were again entwining themselves in her rope of pearls.
+"Yes," she said almost musingly, "I think I must be going soon."
+
+He was dismayed.  He realised that the moment for action had come.
+His heart was sounding the charge within him.  And then that cursed
+rope of pearls, emblem of the wealth and luxury in which she had
+been nurtured, stood like an impassable abattis across his path.
+
+"You - you will be glad to go, of course?" he suggested.
+
+"Hardly that.  It has been very pleasant here." She sighed.
+
+"We shall miss you very much," he said gloomily.  "The house at
+Monsanto will not be the same when you are gone.  Una will be lost
+and desolate without you."
+
+"It occurs to me sometimes," she said slowly, "that the people
+about Una think too much of Una and too little of themselves."
+
+It was a cryptic speech.  In another it might have signified a
+spitefulness unthinkable in Sylvia Armytage; therefore it puzzled
+him very deeply.  He stood silent, wondering what precisely she
+might mean, and thus in silence they continued for a spell.  Then
+slowly she turned and the blaze of light from the windows fell about
+her irradiantly.  She was rather pale, and her eyes were of a
+suspiciously excessive brightness.  And again she made use of the
+phrase:
+
+"Una will be waiting for you."
+
+Yet, as before, he stood silent and immovable, considering her,
+questioning himself, searching her face and his own soul.  All he
+saw was that rope of shimmering pearls.
+
+"And after all, as yourself suggested, it is possible that others
+may be waiting for me," she added presently.
+
+Instantly he was crestfallen and contrite.  "I sincerely beg your
+pardon, Miss Armytage," and with a pang of which his imperturbable
+exterior gave no hint he proffered her his arm.
+
+She took it, barely touching it with her finger-tips, and they
+re-entered the ante-room.
+
+"When do you think that you will be leaving?" he asked her gently.
+
+There was a note of harshness in the voice that answered him.
+
+"I don't know yet.  But very soon.  The sooner the better, I think."
+
+And then the sleek and courtly Samoval, detaching from, seeming to
+materialise out of, the glittering throng they had entered, was
+bowing low before her, claiming her attention.  Knowing her feelings,
+Tremayne would not have relinquished her, but to his infinite
+amazement she herself slipped her fingers from his scarlet sleeve,
+to place them upon the black one that Samoval was gracefully
+proffering, and greeted Samoval with a gay raillery as oddly in
+contrast with her grave demeanour towards the captain as with her
+recent avowal of detestation for the Count.
+
+Stricken and half angry, Tremayne stood looking after them as they
+receded towards the ballroom.  To increase his chagrin came a laugh
+from Miss Armytage, sharp and rather strident, floating towards
+him, and Miss Armytage's laugh was wont to be low and restrained.
+Samoval, no doubt, had resources to amuse a woman - even a woman
+who instinctively, disliked him - resources of which Captain Tremayne
+himself knew nothing.
+
+And then some one tapped him on the shoulder.  A very tall,
+hawk-faced man in a scarlet coat and tightly strapped blue trousers
+stood beside him.  It was Colquhoun Grant, the ablest intelligence
+officer in Wellington's service.
+
+"Why, Colonel!" cried Tremayne, holding out his hand.  "I didn't
+know you were in Lisbon."
+
+"I arrived only this afternoon."  The keen eyes flashed after the
+disappearing figures of Sylvia and her cavalier.  "Tell me, what is
+the name of the irresistible gallant who has so lightly ravished
+you of your quite delicious companion?"
+
+"Count Samoval," said Tremayne shortly.
+
+Grant's face remained inscrutable.  "Really!" he said softly.  "So
+that is Jeronymo de Samoval, eh?  How very interesting.  A great
+supporter of the British policy; therefore an altruist, since
+himself he is a sufferer by it; and I hear that he has become a
+great friend of O'Moy's."
+
+"He is at Monsanto a good deal certainly," Tremayne admitted.
+
+"Most interesting." Grant was slowly nodding, and a faint smile
+curled his thin, sensitive lips.  "But I'm keeping you, Tremayne,
+and no doubt you would be dancing.  I shall perhaps see you
+to-morrow.  I shall be coming up to Monsanto."
+
+And with a wave of the hand he passed on and was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE ALLY
+
+
+Tremayne elbowed his way through the gorgeous crowd, exchanging
+greetings here and there as he went, and so reached the ballroom
+during a pause in the dancing.  He looked round for Lady O'Moy,
+but he could see her nowhere, and would never have found her had
+not Carruthers pointed out a knot of officers and assured him that
+the lady was in the heart of it and in imminent peril of being
+suffocated.
+
+Thither the captain bent his steps, looking neither to right nor
+left in his singleness of purpose.  Thus it happened that he saw
+neither O'Moy, who had just arrived, nor the massive, decorated bulk
+of Marshal Beresford, with whom the adjutant stood in conversation
+on the skirts of the throng that so assiduously worshipped at her
+ladyship's shrine.
+
+Captain Tremayne went through the group with all a sapper's skill at
+piercing obstacles, and so came face to face with the lady of his
+quest.   Seeing her so radiant now, with sparkling eyes and ready
+laugh, it was difficult to conceive her haunted by any such anxieties
+as Miss Armytage had mentioned.  Yet the moment she perceived him,
+as if his presence acted as a reminder to lift her out of the
+delicious present, something of her gaiety underwent eclipse.
+
+Child of impulse that she was, she gave no thought to her action and
+the construction it might possibly bear in the minds of men chagrined
+and slighted.
+
+"Why, Ned," she cried, "you have kept me waiting."  And with a
+complete and charming ignoring of the claims of all who had been
+before him, and who were warring there for precedence of one another,
+she took his arm in token that she yielded herself to him before
+even the honour was so much as solicited.
+
+With nods and smiles to right and left - a queen dismissing her
+court - she passed on the captain's arm through the little crowd
+that gave way before her dismayed and intrigued, and so away.
+
+O'Moy, who had been awaiting a favourable moment to present the
+marshal by the marshal's own request, attempted to thrust forward
+now with Beresford at his side.  But the bowing line of officers
+whose backs were towards him effectively barred his progress, and
+before they had broken up that formation her ladyship and her
+cavalier were out of sight, lost in the moving crowd.
+
+The marshal laughed good-humouredly.  "The infallible reward of
+patience," said he.  And O'Moy laughed with him.  But the next
+moment he was scowling at what he overheard.
+
+"On my soul, that was impudence!" an Irish infantryman had protested.
+
+"Have you ever heard," quoth a heavy dragoon, who was also a heavy
+jester, "that in heaven the last shall be first?  If you pay court
+to an angel you must submit to celestial customs."
+
+"And bedad," rejoined the infantryman, "as there's no marryin' in
+heaven ye've got to make the best of it with other men's wives.
+Sure it's a great success that fellow should be in paradise.  Did
+ye remark the way she melted to him beauty swooning at the sight
+of temptation!  Bad luck to him!  Who is he at all?"
+
+They dispersed laughing and followed by O'Moy's scowling eyes.  It
+annoyed him that his wife's thoughtless conduct should render her
+the butt of such jests as these, and perhaps a subject for lewd
+gossip.  He would speak to her about it later.  Meanwhile the marshal
+had linked arms with him.
+
+"Since the privilege must be postponed," said he, "suppose that we
+seek supper.  I have always found that a man can best heal in his
+stomach the wounds taken by his heart."  His fleshy bulk afforded a
+certain prima-facie confirmation of the dictum.
+
+With a roll more suggestive of the quarter-deck than the saddle, the
+great man bore off O'Moy in quest of material consolation.  Yet as
+they went the adjutant's eyes raked the ballroom in quest of his
+wife.   That quest, however, was unsuccessful, for his wife was
+already in the garden.
+
+"I want to talk to you most urgently, Ned.  Take me somewhere where
+we can be quite private," she had begged the captain.  "Somewhere
+where there is no danger of being overheard."
+
+Her agitation, now uncontrolled, suggested to Tremayne that
+the matter might be far more serious and urgent than Miss Armytage
+had represented it.  He thought first of the balcony where he had
+lately been.  But then the balcony opened immediately from the
+ante-room and was likely at any moment to be invaded.  So, since
+the night was soft and warm, he preferred the garden.  Her ladyship
+went to find a wrap, then arm in arm they passed out, and were lost
+in the shadows of an avenue of palm-trees.
+
+"It is about Dick," she said breathlessly.
+
+"I know - Miss Armytage told me."
+
+"What did she tell you?"
+
+"That you had a premonition that he might come to you for assistance."
+
+"A premonition!" Her ladyship laughed nervously.  "It is more than a
+premonition, Ned.  He has come."
+
+The captain stopped in his stride, and stood quite still.
+
+"Come?" he echoed.  "Dick?"
+
+"Sh!" she warned him, and sank her voice from very instinct.  "He
+came to me this evening, half an hour before we left home.  I have
+put him in an alcove adjacent to my dressing-room for the present."
+
+"You have left him there?" He was alarmed.
+
+"Oh, there's no fear.  No one ever goes there except Bridget.  And I
+have locked the alcove.  He's fast asleep.  He was asleep before I
+left.  The poor fellow was so worn and weary."  Followed details of
+his appearance and a recital of his wanderings so far as he had made
+them known to her.  "And he was so insistent that no one should know,
+not even Terence."
+
+"Terence must not know," he said gravely.
+
+"You think that too!"
+
+"If Terence knows - well, you will regret it all the days of your
+life, Una."
+
+He was so stern, so impressive, that she begged for explanation.  He
+afforded it.  "You would be doing Terence the utmost cruelty if you
+told him.  You would be compelling him to choose between his honour
+and his concern for you.  And since he is the very soul of honour,
+he must sacrifice you and himself, your happiness and his own,
+everything that makes life good for you both, to his duty."
+
+She was aghast, for all that she was far from understanding.  But he
+went on relentlessly to make his meaning clear, for the sake of O'Moy
+as much as for her own - for the sake of the future of these two
+people who were perhaps his dearest friends.  He saw in what danger
+of shipwreck their happiness now stood, and he took the determination
+of clearly pointing out to her every shoal in the water through
+which she must steer her course.
+
+"Since this has happened, Una, you must be told the whole truth; you
+must listen, and, above all, be reasonable.  I am Dick's friend, as
+I am your own and Terence's.  Your father was my best friend, perhaps,
+and my gratitude to him is unbounded, as I hope you know.  You and
+Dick are almost as brother and sister to me.  In spite of this -
+indeed, because of this, I have prayed for news that Dick was dead."
+
+Her grasp interrupted him, and he felt the tightening clutch of her
+hands upon his arm in the gloom.
+
+"I have prayed this for Dick's sake, and more than all for the sake
+of your happiness and Terence's.  If Dick is taken the choice before
+Terence is a tragic one.  You will realise it when I tell you that
+duty forced him to pledge his word to the Portuguese Government that
+Dick should be shot when found."
+
+"Oh!"  It was a gasp of horror, of incredulity.  She loosed his
+arm and drew away from him.  "It is infamous!  I can't believe it.
+I can't."
+
+"It is true.  I swear it to you.  I was present, and I heard."
+
+"And you allowed it?"
+
+"What could I do?  How could I interfere?  Besides, the minister
+who demanded that undertaking knew nothing of the relationship
+between O'Moy and this missing officer."
+
+"But - but he could have been told."
+
+"That would have made no difference - unless it were to create
+fresh difficulties."
+
+She stood there ghostly white against the gloom.  A dry sob broke
+from her.  "Terence did that!  Terence did that!" she moaned.  And
+then in a surge of anger: "I shall never speak to Terence again.  I
+shall not live with him another day.  It was infamous!  Infamous!"
+
+"It was not infamous.  It was almost noble, almost heroic," he
+amazed her.  "Listen, Una, and try to understand."  He took her arm
+again and drew her gently on down that avenue of moonlight-fretted
+darkness.
+
+"Oh, I understand," she cried bitterly.  "I understand perfectly.
+He has always been hard on Dick!  He has always made mountains out
+of molehills where Dick was concerned.  He forgets that Dick is
+young a mere boy.  He judges Dick from the standpoint of his own
+sober middle age.  Why, he's an old man - a wicked old man!"
+
+Thus her rage, hurling at O'Moy what in the insolence of her youth
+seemed the last insult.
+
+"You are very unjust, Una.  You are even a little stupid," he
+said, deeming the punishment necessary and salutary.
+
+"Stupid!  I stupid!  I have never been called stupid before."
+
+"But you have undoubtedly deserved to be," he assured her with
+perfect calm.
+
+It took her aback by its directness, and for a moment left her
+without an answer.  Then: "I think you had better leave me," she
+told him frostily.  "You forget yourself."
+
+"Perhaps I do," he admitted.  "That is because I am more concerned
+to think of Dick and Terence and yourself.  Sit down, Una."
+
+They had reached a little circle by a piece of ornamental water,
+facing which a granite-hewn seat had been placed.  She sank to it
+obediently, if sulkily.
+
+"It may perhaps help you to understand what Terence has done when
+I tell you that in his place, loving Dick as I do, I must have
+pledged myself precisely as he did or else despised myself for
+ever.  And being pledged, I must keep my word or go in the same
+self-contempt." He elaborated his argument by explaining the full
+circumstances under which the pledge had been exacted.  " But be in
+no doubt about it," he concluded.  "If Terence knows of Dick's
+presence at Monsanto he has no choice.  He must deliver him up to a
+firing party - or to a court-martial which will inevitably sentence
+him to death, no matter what the defence that Dick may urge.  He is
+a man prejudged, foredoomed by the necessities of war.  And Terence
+will do this although it will break his heart and ruin all his life.
+Understand me, then, that in enjoining you never to allow Terence
+to suspect that Dick is present, I am pleading not so much for you
+or for Dick, but for Terence himself - for it is upon Terence that
+the hardest and most tragic suffering must fall.  Now do you
+understand?"
+
+"I understand that men are very stupid," was her way of admitting it.
+
+"And you see that you were wrong in judging Terence as you did?"
+
+"I - I suppose so."
+
+She didn't understand it all.  But since Tremayne was so insistent
+she supposed there must be something in his point of view.  She had
+been brought up in the belief that Ned Tremayne was common sense
+incarnate; and although she often doubted it - as you may doubt the
+dogmas of a religion in which you have been bred - yet she never
+openly rebelled against that inculcated faith.  Above all she wanted
+to cry.  She knew that it would be very good for her.  She had often
+found a singular relief in tears when vexed by things beyond her
+understanding.  But she had to think of that flock of gallants in
+the ballroom waiting to pay court to her and of her duty towards
+them of preserving her beauty unimpaired by the ravages of a vented
+sorrow.
+
+Tremayne sat down beside her.  "So now that we understand each
+other on that score, let us consider ways and means to dispose of
+Dick."
+
+At once she was uplifted and became all eagerness.
+
+"Yes, Yes.  You will help me, Ned?"
+
+"You can depend upon me to do all in human power."
+
+He thought rapidly, and gave voice to some of his thoughts.  "If I
+could I would take him to my lodgings at Alcantara.  But Carruthers
+knows him and would see him there.  So that is out of the question.
+Then again it is dangerous to move him about.  At any moment he
+might be seen and recognised."
+
+"Hardly recognised," she said.  "His beard disguises him, and his
+dress - "  She shuddered at the very thought of the figure he had
+cut, he, the jaunty, dandy Richard Butler.
+
+"That is something, of course," he agreed.  And then asked: "How
+long do you think that you could keep him hidden?"
+
+"I don't know.  You see, there's Bridget.  She is the only danger,
+as she has charge of my dressing-room."
+
+"It may be desperate, but - Can you trust her?"
+
+"Oh, I am sure I can.  She is devoted to me; she would do
+anything - "
+
+"She must be bought as well.  Devotion and gain when linked
+together will form an unbreakable bond.  Don't let us be stingy,
+Una.  Take her into your confidence boldly, and promise her a
+hundred guineas for her silence - payable on the day that Dick
+leaves the country."
+
+"But how are we to get him out of the country?"
+
+"I think I know a way.  I can depend on Marcus Glennie.  I may tell
+him the whole truth and the identity of our man, or I may not.  I
+must think about that.  But, whatever I decide, I am sure I can
+induce Glennie to take our fugitive home in the Telemachus and land
+him safely somewhere in Ireland, where he will have to lose himself
+for awhile.  Perhaps for Glennie's sake it will be safer not to
+disclose Dick's identity.  Then if there should be trouble later,
+Glennie, having known nothing of the real facts, will not be held
+responsible.  I will talk to him to-night."
+
+"Do you think he will consent?" she asked in strained anxiety -
+anxiety to have her anxieties dispelled.
+
+"I am sure he will.  I can almost pledge my word on it.  Marcus
+would do anything to serve me.  Oh, set your mind at rest.  Consider
+the thing done.  Keep Dick safely hidden for a week or so until the
+Telemachus is ready to sail - he mustn't go on board until the last
+moment, for several reasons - and I will see to the rest."
+
+Under that confident promise her troubles fell from her, as lightly
+as they ever did.
+
+"You are very good to me, Ned.  Forgive me what I said just now.
+And I think I understand about Terence - poor dear old Terence."
+
+"Of course you do."  Moved to comfort her as he might have been
+moved to comfort a child, he flung his arm along the seat behind
+her, and patted her shoulder soothingly.  "I knew you would
+understand.  And not a word to Terence, not a word that could so
+much as awaken his suspicions.  Remember that."
+
+"Oh, I shall."
+
+Fell a step upon the patch behind them crunching the gravel.
+Captain Tremayne, his arm still along the back of the seat, and
+seeming to envelop her ladyship, looked over her shoulder.  A tall
+figure was advancing briskly.  He recognised it even in the gloom
+by its height and gait and swing for O'Moy's.
+
+"Why, here is Terence," he said easily - so easily, with such frank
+and obvious honesty of welcome, that the anger in which O'Moy came
+wrapped fell from him on the instant, to be replaced by shame.
+
+"I have been looking for you everywhere, my dear," he said to Una.
+"Marshal Beresford is anxious to pay you his respects before he
+leaves, and you have been so hedged about by gallants all the
+evening that it's devil a chance he's had of approaching you."
+There was a certain constraint in his voice, for a man may not
+recover instantly from such feelings as those which had fetched him
+hot-foot down that path at sight of those two figures sitting so
+close and intimate, the young man's arm so proprietorialy about the
+lady's shoulders - as it seemed.
+
+Lady O'Moy sprang up at once, with a little silvery laugh that
+was singularly care-free; for had not Tremayne lifted the burden
+entirely from her shoulders?
+
+"You should have married a dowd," she mocked him.  "Then you'd
+have found her more easily accessible."
+
+"Instead of finding her dallying in the moonlight with my secretary,"
+he rallied back between good and ill humour.  And he turned to
+Tremayne: "Damned indiscreet of you, Ned," he added more severely.
+"Suppose you had been seen by any of the scandalmongering old wives
+of the garrison?  A nice thing for Una and a nice thing for me,
+begad, to be made the subject of fly-blown talk over the tea-cups."
+
+Tremayne accepted the rebuke in the friendly spirit in which it
+appeared to be conveyed.  "Sorry, O'Moy," he said.  "You're quite
+right.  We should have thought of it.  Everybody isn't to know what
+our relations are."  And again he was so manifestly honest and so
+completely at his ease that it was impossible to harbour any thought
+of evil, and O'Moy felt again the glow of shame of suspicions so
+utterly unworthy and dishonouring.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE INTELLIGENCE OFFICER
+
+
+In a small room of Count Redondo's palace, a room that had been set
+apart for cards, sat three men about a card-table.  They were Count
+Samoval, the elderly Marquis of Minas, lean, bald and vulturine of
+aspect, with a deep-set eye that glared fiercely through a single
+eyeglass rimmed in tortoise-shell, and a gentleman still on the fair
+side of middle age, with a clear-cut face and iron-grey hair, who
+wore the dark green uniform of a major of Cacadores.
+
+Considering his Portuguese uniform, it is odd that the low-toned,
+earnest conversation amongst them should have been conducted in
+French.
+
+There were cards on the table; but there was no pretence of play.
+You might have conceived them a group of players who, wearied of
+their game, had relinquished it for conversation.  They were the
+only tenants of the room, which was small, cedar-panelled and
+lighted by a girandole of sparkling crystal.  Through the closed
+door came faintly from the distant ballroom the strains of the
+dance music.
+
+With perhaps the single exception of the Principal Souza, the
+British policy had no more bitter opponent in Portugal than the
+Marquis of Minas.  Once a member of the Council of Regency - before
+Souza had been elected to that body - he had quitted it in disgust
+at the British measures.  His chief ground of umbrage had been the
+appointment of British officers to the command of the Portuguese
+regiments which formed the division under Marshal Beresford.  In
+this he saw a deliberate insult and slight to his country and his
+countrymen.  He was a man of burning and blinded patriotism, to whom
+Portugal was the most glorious nation in the world.  He lived in his
+country's splendid past, refusing to recognise that the days of Henry
+the Navigator, of Vasco da Gama, of Manuel the Fortunate - days in
+which Portugal had been great indeed among the nations of the Old
+World were gone and done with.  He respected Britons as great
+merchants and industrious traders; but, after all, merchants and
+traders are not the peers of fighters on land and sea, of navigators,
+conquerors and civilisers, such as his countrymen had been, such as
+he believed them still to be.  That the descendants of Gamas, Cunhas,
+Magalhaes and Albuquerques - men whose names were indelibly written
+upon the very face of the world - should be passed over, whilst alien
+officers lead been brought in to train and command the Portuguese
+legions, was an affront to Portugal which Minas could never forgive.
+
+It was thus that he had become a rebel, withdrawing from a government
+whose supineness he could not condone.  For a while his rebellion
+had been passive, until the Principal Souza had heated him in the
+fire of his own rage and fashioned him into an intriguing instrument
+of the first power.  He was listening intently now to the soft,
+rapid speech of the gentleman in the major's uniform.
+
+"Of course, rumours had reached the Prince of this policy of
+devastation," he was saying, "but his Highness has been disposed to
+treat these rumours lightly, unable to see, as indeed are we all,
+what useful purpose such a policy could finally serve.  He does not
+underrate the talents of milord Wellington as a commander.  He does
+not imagine that he would pursue such operations out of pure
+wantonness; yet if such operations are indeed being pursued, what
+can they be but wanton?  A moment, Count," he stayed Samoval, who
+was about to interrupt.  His mind and manner were authoritative.
+"We know most positively from the Emperor's London agents that the
+war is unpopular in England; we know that public opinion is being
+prepared for a British retreat, for the driving of the British into
+the sea, as must inevitably happen once Monsieur le Prince decides
+to launch his bolt.  Here in the Tagus the British fleet lies ready
+to embark the troops, and the British Cabinet itself" (he spoke more
+slowly and emphatically) "expects that embarkation to take place at
+latest in September, which is just about the time that the French
+offensive should be at its height and the French troops under the
+very walls of Lisbon.  I admit that by this policy of devastation
+if, indeed, it be true - added to a stubborn contesting of every
+foot of ground, the French advance may be retarded.  But the process
+will be costly to Britain in lives and money."
+
+"And more costly still to Portugal," croaked the Marquis of Minas.
+
+"And, as you, say, Monsieur le Marquis, more costly still to Portugal.
+Let me for a moment show you another side of the picture.  The
+French administration, so sane, so cherishing, animated purely by
+ideas of progress, enforcing wise and beneficial laws, making ever
+for the prosperity and well-being of conquered nations, knows how to
+render itself popular wherever it is established.  This Portugal
+knows already - or at least some part of it.  There was the
+administration of Soult in Oporto, so entirely satisfactory to the
+people that it was no inconsiderable party was prepared, subject to
+the Emperor's consent, to offer him the crown and settle down
+peacefully under his rule.  There was the administration of Junot
+in Lisbon.  I ask you: when was Lisbon better governed?
+
+"Contrast, for a moment, with these the present British
+administration - for it amounts to an administration.  Consider
+the burning grievances that must be left behind by this policy of
+laying the country waste, of pauperising a million people of all
+degrees, driving them homeless from the lands on which they were
+born, after compelling them to lend a hand in the destruction of
+all that their labour has built up through long years.  If any
+policy could better serve the purposes of France, I know it not.
+The people from here to Beira should be ready to receive the French
+with open arms, and to welcome their deliverance from this most
+costly and bitter British protection.
+
+"Do you, Messieurs, detect a flaw in these arguments?"
+
+Both shook their heads.
+
+"Bien!" said the major of Portuguese Cacadores.  "Then we reach one
+or two only possible conclusions: either these rumours of a policy
+of devastation which have reached the Prince of Esslingen are as
+utterly false as he believes them to be, or - "
+
+"To my cost I know them to be true, as I have already told you,"
+Samoval interrupted bitterly.
+
+"Or," the major persisted, raising a hand to restrain the Count,
+"or there is something further that has not been yet discovered - a
+mystery the enucleation of which will shed light upon all the rest.
+Since you assure me, Monsieur le Comte, that milord Wellington's
+policy is beyond doubt, as reported to Monsieur, le Marechal, it
+but remains to address ourselves to the discovery of the mystery
+underlying it.  What conclusions have you reached?  You, Monsieur de
+Samoval, have had exceptional opportunities of observation, I
+understand."
+
+"I am afraid my opportunities have been none so exceptional as you
+suppose," replied Samoval, with a dubious shake of his sleek, dark
+head.  "At one tine I founded great hopes in Lady O'Moy.  But Lady
+O'Moy is a fool, and does not enjoy her husband's confidence in
+official matters.  What she knows I know.  Unfortunately it does not
+amount to very much.  One conclusion, however, I have reached:
+Wellington is preparing in Portugal a snare for Massena's army."
+
+"A snare?  Hum!"  The major pursed his full lips into a smile of
+scorn.   "There cannot be a trap with two exits, my friend.  Massena
+enters Portugal at Almeida and marches to Lisbon and the open sea.
+He may be inconvenienced or hampered in his march; but its goal is
+certain.  Where, then, can lie the snare?  Your theory presupposes
+an impassable barrier to arrest the French when they are deep in the
+country and an overwhelming force to cut off their retreat when that
+barrier is reached.  The overwhelming force does not exist and cannot
+be manufactured; as for the barrier, no barrier that it lies within
+human power to construct lies beyond French power to over-stride."
+
+"I should not make too sure of that," Samoval warned him.  "And you
+have overlooked something."
+
+The major glanced at the Count sharply and without satisfaction.  He
+accounted himself - trained as he had been under the very eye of the
+great Emperor - of some force in strategy and tactics, a player too
+well versed in the game to overlook the possible moves of an opponent.
+
+"Ha!" he said, with the ghost of a sneer.  "Far instance, Monsieur le
+Comte?"
+
+"The overwhelming force exists," said Samoval.
+
+"Where is it then?  Whence has it been created?  If you refer to
+the united British and Portuguese troops, you will be good enough to
+bear in mind that they will be retreating before the Prince.  They
+cannot at once be before and behind him."
+
+The man's cool assurance and cooler contempt of Samoval's views
+stung the Count into some sharpness
+
+"Are you seeking information, sir, or are you bestowing it?" he
+inquired.
+
+"Ah!  Your pardon, Monsieur le Comte.  I inquire of  course.  I
+put forward arguments to anticipate conditions that may possibly be
+erroneous."
+
+Samoval waived the point.  "There is another force besides the
+British and Portuguese troops that you have left out of your
+calculations."
+
+"And that?" The major was still faintly incredulous.
+
+"You should remember what Wellington obviously remembers: that a
+French army depends for its sustenance upon the country it is
+invading.  That is why Wellington is stripping the French line of
+penetration as bare of sustenance as this card-table.  If we assume
+the existence of the barrier - an impassable line of fortifications
+encountered within many marches of the frontier - we may also
+assume that starvation will be the overwhelming force that will cut
+off the French retreat."
+
+The other's keen eyes flickered.  For a moment his face lost its
+assurance, and it was Samoval's turn to smile.  But the major made
+a sharp recovery.  He slowly shook his iron-grey head.
+
+"You have no right to assume an impassable barrier.  That is an
+inadmissible hypothesis.  There is no such thing as a line of
+fortifications impassable to the French."
+
+"You will pardon me, Major, but it is yourself have no right to your
+own assumptions.  Again you overlook something.  I will grant that
+technically what you say is true.  No fortifications can be built
+that cannot be destroyed - given adequate power, with which it is
+yet to prove that Massena not knowing what may await him, will be
+equipped.
+
+"But let us for a moment take so much for granted, and now consider
+this: fortifications are unquestionably building in the region of
+Torres Vedras, and Wellington guards the secret so jealously that
+not even the British - either here or in England - are aware of
+their nature.  That is why the Cabinet in London takes for granted
+an embarkation in September.  Wellington has not even taken his
+Government into his confidence.  That is the sort of man he is.  Now
+these fortifications have been building since last October.  Best
+part of eight months have already gone in their construction.  It
+may be another two or three months before the French army reaches
+them.  I do not say that the French cannot pass them, given time.
+But how long will it take the French to pull down what it will have
+taken ten or eleven months to construct?  And if they are unable to
+draw sustenance from a desolate, wasted country, what time will they
+have at their disposal?  It will be with them a matter of life or
+death.  Having come so far they must reach Lisbon or perish; and if
+the fortifications can delay them by a single month, then, granted
+that all Lord Wellington's other dispositions have been duly carried
+out, perish they must.  It remains, Monsieur le Major, for you to
+determine whether, with all their energy, with all their genius and
+all their valour, the French can - in an ill-nourished condition -
+destroy in a few weeks the considered labour of nearly a year."
+
+The major was aghast.  He had changed colour, and through his eyes,
+wide and staring, his stupefaction glared forth at them.
+
+Minas uttered a dry cough under cover of his hand, and screwed up
+his eyeglass to regard the major more attentively.  "You do not
+appear to have considered all that," he said.
+
+"But, my dear Marquis," was the half-indignant answer, "why was I
+not told all this to begin with?  You represented yourself as but
+indifferently informed, Monsieur de Samoval.  Whereas - "
+
+"So I am, my dear Major, as far as information goes.  If I did not
+use these arguments before, it was because it seemed to me an
+impertinence to offer what, after all, are no more than the
+conclusions of my own constructive and deductive reasoning to one
+so well versed in strategy as yourself."
+
+The major was silenced for a moment.  "I congratulate you, Count,"
+he said.  "Monsieur le Marechal shall have your views without delay.
+Tell me," he begged.  "You say these fortifications lie in the
+region of Torres Vedras.  Can you be more precise?"
+
+"I think so.  But again I warn you that I can tell you only what I
+infer.   I judge they will run from the sea, somewhere near the
+mouth of the Zizandre, in a semicircle to the Tagus, somewhere to
+the south of Santarem.  I know that they do not reach as far north
+as San, because the roads there are open, whereas all roads to the
+south, where I am assuming that the fortifications lie, are closed
+and closely guarded."
+
+"Why do you suggest a semicircle?"
+
+"Because that is the formation of the hills, and presumably the line
+of heights would be followed."
+
+"Yes," the major approved slowly.  "And the distance, then, would be
+some thirty or forty miles?"
+
+"Fully."
+
+The major's face relaxed its gravity.  He even smiled.  "You will
+agree, Count, that in a line of that extent a uniform strength is
+out of the question.  It must perforce present many weak, many
+vulnerable, places."
+
+"Oh, undoubtedly."
+
+"Plans of these lines must be in existence."
+
+"Again undoubtedly.  Sir Terence O'Moy will have plans in his
+possession showing their projected extent.  Colonel Fletcher, who is
+in charge of the construction, is in constant communication with the
+adjutant, himself an engineer; and - as I partly imagine, partly infer
+from odd phrases that I have overheard - especially entrusted by Lord
+Wellington with the supervision of the works."
+
+"Two things, then, are necessary," said the major promptly.  "The first
+is, that the devastation of the country should be retarded, and as far
+as possible hindered altogether."
+
+"That," said Minas, "you may safely leave to myself and Souza's other
+friends, the northern noblemen who have no intention of becoming the
+victims of British disinclination to pitched battles."
+
+"The second - and this is more difficult - is that we should obtain by
+hook or by crook a plan of the fortifications."  And he looked directly
+at Samoval.
+
+The Count nodded slowly, but his face expressed doubt.
+
+"I am quite alive to the necessity.  I always have been.  But - "
+
+"To a man of your resource and intelligence - an intelligence of
+which you have just given such veer signal proof - the matter
+should be possible."  He paused a moment.  Then: "If I understand
+you correctly, Monsieur de Samoval, your fortunes have suffered
+deeply, and you are almost ruined by this policy of Wellington's.
+You are offered the opportunity of making a magnificent recovery.
+The Emperor is the most generous paymaster in the world, and he is
+beyond measure impatient at the manner in which the campaign in the
+Peninsula is dragging on.  He has spoken of it as an ulcer that is
+draining the Empire of its resources.  For the man who could render
+him the service of disclosing the weak spot in this armour, the
+Achilles heel of the British, there would be a reward beyond all
+your possible dreams.   Obtain the plans, then, and - "
+
+He checked abruptly.  The door had opened, and in a Venetian mirror
+facing him upon the wall the major caught the reflection of a British
+uniform, the stiff gold collar surmounted by a bronzed hawk face
+with which he was acquainted.
+
+"I beg your pardon, gentlemen," said the officer in Portuguese, "I
+was looking for - "
+
+His voice became indistinct, so that they never knew who it was that
+he had been seeking when he intruded upon their privacy.  The door
+had closed again and the reflection had vanished from the mirror.
+But there were beads of perspiration on the major's brow.
+
+"It is fortunate," he muttered breathlessly, "that my back was
+towards him.  I would as soon meet the devil face to face.  I didn't
+dream he was in Lisbon."
+
+"Who is he?" asked Minas.
+
+"Colonel Grant, the British Intelligence officer.  Phew!  Name of
+a Name!  What an escape!"  The major mopped his brow with a silk
+handkerchief.  "Beware of him, Monsieur de Samoval."
+
+He rose.  He was obviously shaken by the meeting.
+
+"If one of you will kindly make quite sure that he is not about I
+think that I had better go.  If we should meet everything might be
+ruined."  Then with a change of manner he stayed Samoval, who was
+already on his way to the door.  "We understand each other, then?"
+he questioned them.  "I have my papers, and at dawn I leave Lisbon.
+I shall report your conclusions to the Prince, and in anticipation
+I may already offer you the expression of his profoundest gratitude.
+Meanwhile, you know what is to do.  Opposition to the policy, and
+the plans of the fortifications - above all the plans."
+
+He shook hands with them, and having waited until Samoval assured
+him that the corridor outside was clear, he took his departure,
+and was soon afterwards driving home, congratulating himself upon
+his most fortunate escape from the hawk eye of Colquhoun Grant.
+
+But when in the dead of that night he was awakened to find a British
+sergeant with a halbert and six redcoats with fixed bayonets
+surrounding his bed it occurred to him belatedly that what one man
+can see in a mirror is also visible to another, and that Marshal
+Massena, Prince of Esslingen, waiting for information beyond Ciudad
+Rodrigo, would never enjoy the advantages of a report of Count
+Samoval's masterly constructive and deductive reasoning.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE GENERAL ORDER
+
+
+Sir Terence sat alone in his spacious, severely furnished private
+room in the official quarters at Monsanto.  On the broad carved
+writing-table before him there was a mass of documents relating to
+the clothing and accoutrement of the forces, to leaves of absence,
+to staff appointments; there were returns from the various divisions
+of the sick and wounded in hospital, from which a complete list was
+to be prepared for the Secretary of State for War at home; there
+were plans of the lines at Torres Vedras just .received, indicating
+the progress of the works at various points; and there were documents
+and communications of all kinds concerned with the adjutant-general's
+multifarious and arduous duties, including an urgent letter from
+Colonel Fletcher suggesting that the Commander-in-Chief should take
+an early opportunity of inspecting in person the inner lines of
+fortification.
+
+ Sir Terence, however, sat back in his chair, his work neglected,
+his eyes dreamily gazing through the open window, but seeing nothing
+of the sun-drenched landscape beyond, a heavy frown darkening his
+bronzed and rugged face.  His mind was very far from his official
+duties and the mass of reminders before him - this Augean stable of
+arrears.  He was lost in thought of his wife and Tremayne.
+
+Five days had elapsed since the ball at Count Redondo's, where
+Sir Terence had surprised the pair together in the garden and his
+suspicions had been fired by the compromising attitude in which he
+had discovered them.  Tremayne's frank, easy bearing, so unassociable
+with guilt, had, as we know, gone far, to reassure him, and had even
+shamed him, so that he had trampled his suspicions underfoot.  But
+other things had happened since to revive his bitter doubts.  Daily,
+constantly, had he been coming upon Tremayne and Lady O'Moy alone
+together in intimate, confidential talk which was ever silenced on
+his approach.  The two had taken to wandering by themselves in the
+gardens at all hours, a thing that had never been so before, and
+O'Moy detected, or imagined that he detected, a closer intimacy
+between them, a greater warmth towards the captain on the part of
+her ladyship.
+
+Thus matters had reached a pass in which peace of mind was impossible
+to him.  It was not merely what he saw, it was his knowledge of what
+was; it was his ever-present consciousness of his own age and
+his wife's youth; it was the memory of his ante-nuptial jealousy of
+Tremayne which had been awakened by the gossip of those days - a
+gossip that pronounced Tremayne Una Butler's poor suitor, too poor
+either to declare himself or to be accepted if he did.  The old
+wound which that gossip had dealt him then was reopened now.  He
+thought of Tremayne's manifest concern for Una; he remembered how in
+that very room some six weeks ago, when Butler's escapade had first
+been heard of, it was from avowed concern for Una that Tremayne had
+urged him to befriend and rescue his rascally brother-in-law.  He
+remembered, too, with increasing bitterness that it was Una herself
+had induced him to appoint Tremayne to his staff.
+
+There were moments when the conviction of Tremayne's honesty, the
+thought of Tremayne's unswerving friendship for himself, would surge
+up to combat and abate the fires of his devastating jealousy.
+
+But evidence would kindle those fires anew until they flamed up to
+scorch his soul with shame and anger.  He had been a fool in that he
+had married a woman of half his years; a fool in that he had suffered
+her former lover to be thrown into close association with her.
+
+Thus he assured himself.  But he would abide by his folly, and so
+must she.  And he would see to it that whatever fruits that folly
+yielded, dishonour should not be one of them.  Through all his
+darkening rage there beat the light of reason.  To avert, he
+bethought him, was better than to avenge.  Nor were such stains to
+be wiped out by vengeance.   A cuckold remains a cuckold though he
+take the life of the man who has reduced him to that ignominy.
+
+Tremayne must go before the evil transcended reparation.  Let him
+return to his regiment and do his work of sapping and mining
+elsewhere than in O'Moy's household.
+
+Eased by that resolve he rose, a tall, martial figure, youth and
+energy in every line of it for all his six and forty years.  Awhile
+he paced the room in thought.  Then, suddenly, with hands clenched
+behind his back, he checked by the window, checked on a horrible
+question that had flashed upon his tortured mind.  What if already
+the evil should be irreparable? What proof had he that it was not so?
+
+The door opened, and Tremayne himself came in quickly.
+
+"Here's the very devil to pay, sir," he announced, with that odd
+mixture of familiarity towards his friend and deference to his chief.
+
+O'Moy looked at him in silence with smouldering, questioning eyes,
+thinking of anything but the trouble which the captain's air and
+manner heralded.
+
+"Captain Stanhope has just arrived from headquarters with messages
+for you.  A terrible thing has happened, sir.  The dispatches from
+home by the Thunderbolt which we forwarded from here three weeks ago
+reached Lord Wellington only the day before yesterday."
+
+Sir Terence became instantly alert.
+
+"Garfield, who carried them, came into collision at Penalva with an
+officer of Anson's Brigade.  There was a meeting, and Garfield was
+shot through the lung.  He lay between life and death for a fortnight,
+with the result that the dispatches were delayed until he recovered
+sufficiently to remember them and to have them forwarded by other
+hands.  But you had better see Stanhope himself."
+
+The aide-de-camp came in.  He was splashed from head to foot in
+witness of the fury with which he had ridden, his hair was caked
+with dust and his face haggard.  But he carried himself with
+soldierly uprightness, and his speech was brisk.  He repeated what
+Tremayne had already stated, with some few additional details.
+
+"This wretched fellow sent Lord Wellington a letter dictated from
+his bed, in which he swore that the duel was forced upon him, and
+that his honour allowed him no alternative.  I don't think any
+feature of the case has so deeply angered Lord Wellington as this
+stupid plea.  He mentioned that when Sir John Moore was at Herrerias,
+in the course of his retreat upon Corunna, he sent forward
+instructions for the leading division to halt at Lugo, where he
+designed to deliver battle if the enemy would accept it.  That
+dispatch was carried to Sir David Baird by one of Sir John's aides,
+but Sir David forwarded it by the hand of a trooper who got drunk
+and lost it.  That, says Lord Wellington, is the only parallel, so
+far as he is aware, of the present case, with this difference, that
+whilst a common trooper might so far fail to appreciate the
+importance of his mission, no such lack of appreciation can excuse
+Captain Garfield."
+
+"I am glad of that," said Sir Terence, who had been bristling.
+"For a moment I imagined that it was to be implied I had been as
+indiscreet in my choice of a messenger as Sir David Baird."
+
+"No, no, Sir Terence.  I merely repeated Lord Wellington's words
+that you may realise how deeply angered he is.  If Garfield recovers
+from his wound he will be tried by court-martial.  He is under open
+arrest meanwhile, as is his opponent in the duel - a Major Sykes of
+the 23rd Dragoons.  That they will both be broke is beyond doubt.
+But that is not all.  This affair, which might have had such grave
+consequences, coming so soon upon the heels of Major Berkeley's
+business, has driven Lord Wellington to a step regarding which this
+letter will instruct you."
+
+Sir Terence broke the seal.  The letter, penned by a secretary, but
+bearing Wellington's own signature, ran as follows:
+
+"The bearer, Captain Stanhope, will inform you of the particulars
+of this disgraceful business of Captain Garfield's.  The affair
+following so soon upon that of Major Berkeley has determined me to
+make it clearly understood to the officers in his Majesty's service
+that they have been sent to the Peninsula to fight the French and
+not each other or members of the civilian population.  While this
+campaign continues, and as long as I am in charge of it, I am
+determined not to suffer upon any plea whatever the abominable
+practice of duelling among those under my command.  I desire you to
+publish this immediately in general orders, enjoining upon officers
+of all ranks without exception the necessity to postpone the
+settlement of private quarrels at least until the close of this
+campaign.  And to add force to this injunction you will make it
+known that any infringement of this order will be considered as a
+capital offence; that any officer hereafter either sending or
+accepting a challenge will, if found guilty by a general
+court-martial, be immediately shot."
+
+Sir Terence nodded slowly.
+
+"Very well," he said.  "The measure is most wise, although I doubt
+if it will be popular.  But, then, unpopularity is the fate of wise
+measures.  I am glad the matter has not ended more seriously.  The
+dispatches in question, so far as I can recollect, were not of great
+urgency."
+
+"There is something more," said Captain Stanhope.  "The dispatches
+bore signs of having been tampered with."
+
+"Tampered with?"  It was a question from Tremayne, charged with
+incredulity.  "But who would have tampered with them?"
+
+"There were signs, that is all.  Garfield was taken to the house of
+the parish priest, where he lay lost until he recovered sufficiently
+to realise his position for himself.  No doubt you will have a
+schedule of the contents of the dispatch, Sir Terence?"
+
+"Certainly.  It is in your possession, I think, Tremayne."
+
+Tremayne turned to his desk, and a brief search in one of its
+well-ordered drawers brought to light an oblong strip of paper
+folded and endorsed.  He unfolded and spread it on Sir Terence's
+table, whilst Captain Stanhope, producing a note with which he
+came equipped, stooped to check off the items.  Suddenly he
+stopped, frowned, and finally placed his finger under one of the
+lines of Tremayne's schedule, carefully studying his own note for
+a moment.
+
+"Ha!" he said quietly at last.  "What's this?" And he read: "'Note
+from Lord Liverpool of reinforcements to be embarked for Lisbon in
+June or July.'"  He looked at the adjutant and the adjutant's
+secretary.  "That would appear to be the most important document of
+all - indeed the only document of any vital importance.  And it was
+not included in the dispatch as it reached Lord Wellington."
+
+The three looked gravely at one another in silence.
+
+"Have you a copy of the note, sir?" inquired the aide-de-camp.
+
+"Not a copy - but a summary of its contents, the figures it
+contained, are pencilled there on the margin," Tremayne answered.
+
+"Allow me, sir," said Stanhope, and taking up a quill from the
+adjutant's table he rapidly copied the figures.  "Lord Wellington
+must have this memorandum as soon as possible.  The rest, Sir
+Terence, is of course a matter for yourself.  You will know what
+to do.  Meanwhile I shall report to his lordship what has occurred.
+I had best set out at once."
+
+"If you will rest for an hour, and give my wife the pleasure of
+your company at luncheon, I shall have a letter ready for Lord
+Wellington," replied Sir Terence.  "Perhaps you'll see to it,
+Tremayne," he added, without waiting for Captain Stanhope's answer
+to an invitation which amounted to a command.
+
+Thus Stanhope was led away, and Sir Terence, all other matters
+forgotten for the moment, sat down to write his letter.
+
+Later in the day, after Captain Stanhope had taken his departure,
+the duty fell to Tremayne of framing the general order and seeing
+to the dispatch of a copy to each division.
+
+"I wonder," he said to Sir Terence, "who will be the first to break
+it?"
+
+"Why, the fool who's most anxious to be broke himself," answered Sir
+Terence.
+
+There appeared to be reservations about it in Tremayne's mind.
+
+"It's a devilish stringent regulation," he criticised.
+
+"But very salutary and very necessary."
+
+"Oh, quite." Tremayne's agreement was unhesitating.  "But I shouldn't
+care to feel the restraint of it, and I thank heaven I have no enemy
+thirsting for my blood."
+
+Sir Terence's brow darkened.  His face was turned away from his
+secretary.  "How can a man be confident of that?" he wondered.
+
+"Oh, a clean conscience, I suppose," laughed Tremayne, and he gave
+his attention to his papers.
+
+Frankness, honesty and light-heartedness rang so clear in the words
+that they sowed in Sir Terence's mind fresh doubts of the galling
+suspicion he had been harbouring.
+
+"Do you boast a clean conscience, eh, Ned?" he asked, not without a
+lurking shame at this deliberate sly searching of the other's mind.
+Yet he strained his ears for the answer.
+
+"Almost clean," said Tremayne.  "Temptation doesn't stain when it's
+resisted, does it?"
+
+Sir Terence trembled.  But he controlled himself.
+
+"Nay, now, that's a question for the casuists.  They right answer
+you that it depends upon the temptation."  And he asked point-blank:
+"What's tempting you?"
+
+Tremayne was in a mood for confidences, and Sir Terence was his
+friend.  But he hesitated.  His answer to the question was an
+irrelevance.
+
+"It's just hell to be poor, O'Moy," he said.
+
+The adjutant turned to stare at him.  Tremayne was sitting with his
+head resting on one hand, the fingers thrusting through the crisp
+fair hair, and there was gloom in his clear-cut face, a dullness in
+the usually keen grey eyes.
+
+"Is there anything on your mind?" quoth Sir Terence.
+
+"Temptation," was the answer.  "It's an unpleasant thing to struggle
+against."
+
+"But you spoke of poverty?"
+
+"To be sure.  If I weren't poor I could put my fortunes to the test,
+and make an end of the matter one way or the other."
+
+There was a pause.  "Sure I hope I am the last man to force a
+confidence, Ned," said O'Moy.  "But you certainly seem as if it
+would do you good to confide."
+
+Tremayne shook himself mentally.  "I think we had better deal with
+the matter of this dispatch that was tampered with at Penalva."
+
+"So we will, to be sure.  But it can wait a minute."  Sir Terence
+pushed back his chair, and rose.  He crossed slowly to his
+secretary's side.  "What's on your mind, Ned?" he asked with abrupt
+solicitude, and Ned could not suspect that it was the matter on Sir
+Terence's own mind that was urging him - but urging him hopefully.
+
+Captain Tremayne looked up with a rueful smile.  "I thought you
+boasted that you never forced a confidence." And then he looked
+away.  "Sylvia Armytage tells me that she is thinking of returning to
+England,"
+
+For a moment the words seemed to Sir Terence a fresh irrelevance;
+another attempt to change the subject.  Then quite suddenly a light
+broke upon his mind, shedding a relief so great and joyous that he
+sought to check it almost in fear.
+
+"It is more than she has told me," he answered steadily.  "But then,
+no doubt, you enjoy her confidence."
+
+Tremayne flashed him a wry glance and looked away again.
+
+"Alas!" he said, and fetched a sigh.
+
+"And is Sylvia the temptation, Ned?"
+
+Tremayne was silent for a while, little dreaming how Sir Terence
+hung upon his answer, how impatiently he awaited it.
+
+"Of course," he said at last.  "Isn't it obvious to any one?"  And
+he grew rhapsodical: "How can a man be daily in her company without
+succumbing to her loveliness, to her matchless grace of body and of
+mind, without perceiving that she is incomparable, peerless, as much
+above other women as an angel perhaps might be above herself?"
+
+Before his glum solemnity, and before something else that Tremayne
+could not suspect, Sir Terence exploded into laughter.  Of the
+immense and joyous relief in it his secretary caught no hint; all
+he heard was its sheer amusement, and this galled and shamed him.
+For no man cares to be laughed at for such feelings as Tremayne
+had been led into betraying.
+
+"You think it something to laugh at?" he said tartly.
+
+"Laugh, is it?" spluttered Sir Terence.  "God grant I don't burst a
+blood-vessel."
+
+Tremayne reddened.  "When you've indulged your humour, sir," he
+said stiffly, "perhaps you'll consider the matter of this dispatch."
+
+But Sir Terence laughed more uproariously than ever.  He came to
+stand beside Tremayne, and slapped him heartily on the shoulder.
+
+"Ye'll kill me, Ned!" he protested.  "For God's sake, not so glum.
+It's that makes ye ridiculous."
+
+"I am sorry you find me ridiculous."
+
+"Nay, then, it's glad ye ought to be.  By my soul, if Sylvia tempts
+you, man, why the devil don't ye just succumb and have done with it?
+She's handsome enough and well set up with her air of an Amazon, and
+she rides uncommon straight, begad!  Indeed it's a broth of a girl
+she is in the hunting-field, the ballroom, or at the breakfast-table,
+although riper acquaintance may discover her not to be quite all that
+you imagine her at present.  Let your temptation lead you then,
+entirely, and good luck to you, my boy."
+
+"Didn't I tell you, O'Moy," answered the captain, mollified a little
+by the sympathy and good feeling peeping through the adjutant's
+boisterousness, "that poverty is just hell.  It's my poverty that's
+in the way."
+
+"And is that all?  Then it's thankful you should be that Sylvia
+Armytage has got enough for two."
+
+"That's just it."
+
+"Just what?"
+
+"The obstacle.  I could marry a poor woman.  But Sylvia - "
+
+"Have you spoken to her?"
+
+Tremayne was indignant.  "How do you suppose I could?"
+
+"It'll not have occurred to you that the lady may have feelings
+which having aroused you ought to be considering?"
+
+A wry smile and a shake of the head was Tremayne only answer; and
+then Carruthers came in fresh from Lisbon, where he had been upon
+business connected with the commissariat, and to Tremayne's relief
+the subject was perforce abandoned.
+
+Yet he marvelled several times that day that the hilarity he should
+have awakened in Sir Terence continued to cling to the adjutant, and
+that despite the many vexatious matters claiming attention he should
+preserve an irrepressible and almost boyish gaiety.
+
+Meanwhile, however, the coming of Carruthers had brought the
+adjutant a moment's seriousness, and he reverted to the business of
+Captain Garfield.  When he had mentioned the missing note, Carruthers
+very properly became grave.  He was a short, stiffly built man with
+a round, good-humoured, rather florid face.
+
+"The matter must be probed at once, sir," he ventured.  "We know
+that we move in a tangle of intrigues and espionage.  But such a
+thing as this has never happened before.  Have you anything to go
+upon?"
+
+"Captain Stanhope gave us nothing," said the adjutant.
+
+"It would be best perhaps to get Grant to look into it," said
+Tremayne.
+
+"If he is still in Lisbon," said Sir Terence.
+
+"I passed him in the street an hour ago," replied Carruthers.
+
+"Then by all means let a note be sent to him asking him if he will
+step up to Monsanto as soon as he conveniently can.  You might see
+to it, Tremayne."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE STIFLED QUARREL
+
+
+It was noon of the next day before Colonel Grant came to the house
+at Monsanto from whose balcony floated the British flag, and before
+whose portals stood a sentry in the tall bearskin of the grenadiers.
+
+He found the adjutant alone in his room, and apologised for the
+delay in responding to his invitation, pleading the urgency of other
+matters that he had in hand.
+
+"A wise enactment this of Lord Wellington's," was his next comment.
+"I mean this prohibition of duelling.  It may be resented by some
+of our young bloods as an unwarrantable interference with their
+privileges, but it will do a deal of good, and no one can deny that
+there is ample cause for the measure."
+
+"It is on the subject of the cause that I'm wanting to consult you,"
+said Sir Terence, offering his visitor a chair.  "Have you been
+informed of the details?  No?  Let me give you them."  And he related
+how the dispatch bore signs of having been tampered with, and how
+the only document of any real importance came to be missing from it.
+
+Colonel Grant, sitting with his sabre across his knees, listened
+gravely and thoughtfully.  In the end he shrugged his shoulders, the
+keen hawk face unmoved.
+
+"The harm is done, and cannot very well be repaired.  The information
+obtained, no doubt on behalf of Massena, will by now be on its way to
+him.  Let us be thankful that the matter is not more grave, and
+thankful, too, that you were able to supply a copy of Lord Liverpool's
+figures.  What do you want me to do?"
+
+"Take steps to discover the spy whose existence is disclosed by this
+event."
+
+Colquhoun Grant smiled.  "That is precisely the matter which has
+brought me to Lisbon."
+
+"How?" Sir Terence was amazed.  "You knew?"
+
+"Oh, not that this had happened.  But that the spy - or rather a
+network of espionage - existed.  We move here in a web of intrigue
+wrought by ill-will, self-interest, vindictiveness and every form
+of malice.  Whilst the great bulk of the Portuguese people and
+their leaders are loyally co-operating with us, there is a strong
+party opposing us which would prefer even to see the French prevail.
+Of course you are aware of this.  The heart and brain of all this
+is - as I gather the Principal Souza.  Wellington has compelled his
+retirement from the Government.  But if by doing so he has restricted
+the man's power for evil, he has certainly increased his will fo
+ evil and his activities.
+
+"You tell me that Garfield was cared for by the parish priest at
+Penalva.  There you are.  Half the priesthood of the country are on
+Souza's side, since the Patriarch of Lisbon himself is little more
+than a tool of Souza's.  What happens?  This priest discovers that
+the British officer whom he has so charitably put to bed in his
+house is the bearer of dispatches.  A loyal man would instantly
+have communicated with Marshal Beresford at Thomar.  This fellow,
+instead, advises the intriguers in Lisbon.  The captain's dispatches
+are examined and the only document of real value is abstracted.  Of
+course it would be difficult to establish a case against the priest,
+and it is always vexatious and troublesome to have dealings with
+that class, as it generally means trouble with the peasantry.  But
+the case is as clear as crystal."
+
+"But the intriguers here?  Can you not deal with them?"
+
+"I have them under observation," replied the colonel.  "I already
+knew the leaders, Souza's lieutenants in Lisbon, and I can put my
+hand upon them at any moment.  If I have not already done so it is
+because I find it more profitable to leave them at large; it is
+possible, indeed, that I may never proceed to extremes against them.
+Conceive that they have enabled me to seize La Fleche, the most
+dangerous, insidious and skilful of all Napoleon's agents.  I found
+him at Redondo's ball last week in the uniform of a Portuguese major,
+and through him I was able to track down Souza's chief instrument -
+I discovered them closeted with him in one of the card-rooms."
+
+"And you didn't arrest them?"
+
+"Arrest them!  I apologised for my intrusion, and withdrew.  La
+Fleche took his leave of them.  He was to have left Lisbon at dawn
+equipped with a passport countersigned by yourself, my dear
+adjutant."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"A passport for Major Vieira of the Portuguese Cacadores.  Do you
+remember it?"
+
+"Major Vieira!" Sir Terence frowned thoughtfully.  Suddenly he
+recollected.  "But that was countersigned by me at the request of
+Count Samoval, who represented himself a personal friend of the
+major's."
+
+"So indeed he is.  But the major in question was La Fleche
+nevertheless."
+
+"And Samoval knew this?"
+
+Sir Terence was incredulous.
+
+Colonel Grant did not immediately answer the question.  He preferred
+to continue his narrative.  "That night I had the false major
+arrested very quietly.  I have caused him to disappear for the
+present.  His Lisbon friends believe him to be on his way to
+Massena with the information they no doubt supplied him.  Massena
+awaits his return at Salamanca, and will continue to wait.  Thus
+when he fails to be seen or heard of there will be a good deal of
+mystification on all sides, which is the proper state of mind in
+which to place your opponents.  Lord Liverpool's figures, let me
+add, were not among the interesting notes found upon him - possibly
+because at that date they had not yet been obtained."
+
+"And you say that Samoval was aware of the man's real identity?"
+insisted Sir Terence, still incredulous.  "Aware of it?" Colonel
+Grant laughed shortly.  "Samoval is Souza's principal agent - the
+most dangerous man in Lisbon and the most subtle.  His sympathies
+are French through and through."
+
+Sir Terence stared at him in frank amazement, in utter unbelief.
+"Oh, impossible!" he ejaculated at last.
+
+"I saw Samoval for the first time," said Colonel Grant by way of
+answer, "in Oporto at the time of Soult's occupation.  He did not
+call himself Samoval just then, any more than I called myself
+Colquhoun Grant.  He was very active therein the French interest;
+I should indeed be more precise and say in Bonaparte's interest,
+for he was the man instrumental in disclosing to Soult the Bourbon
+conspiracy which was undermining the marshal's army.  You do not
+know, perhaps, that French sympathy runs in Samoval's family.  You
+may not be aware that the Portuguese Marquis of Alorna, who holds
+a command in the Emperor's army, and is at present with Massena at
+Salamanca, is Samoval's cousin."
+
+"But," faltered Sir Terence, "Count Samoval has been a regular
+visitor here for the past three months."
+
+"So I understand," said Grant coolly.  "If I had known of it before
+I should have warned you.  But, as you are aware, I have been in
+Spain on other business.  You realise the danger of having such a
+man about the place.  Scraps of information - "
+
+"Oh, as to that," Sir Terence interrupted, "I can assure you that
+none have fallen from my official table."
+
+"Never be too sure, Sir Terence.  Matters here must ever be under
+discussion.  There are your secretaries and the ladies - and Samoval
+has a great way with the women.  What they know you may wager that
+he knows."
+
+"They know nothing."
+
+"That is a great deal to say.  Little odds and ends now; a hint at
+one time; a word dropped at another; these things picked up
+naturally by feminine curiosity and retailed thoughtlessly under
+Samoval's charming suasion and display of Britannic sympathies.  And
+Samoval has the devil's own talent for bringing together the pieces
+of a puzzle.  Take the lines now: you may have parted with no details.
+But mention of them will surely have been made in this household.
+However," he broke off abruptly, "that is all past and done with.  I
+am as sure as you are that any real indiscretions in this household
+are unimaginable, and so we may be confident that no harm has yet
+been done.  But you will gather from what I have now told you that
+Samoval's visits here are not a mere social waste of time.  That he
+comes, acquires familiarity and makes himself the friend of the
+family with a very definite aim in view."
+
+"He does not come again," said Sir Terence, rising.
+
+"That is more than I should have ventured to suggest.  But it is a
+very wise resolve.  It will need tact to carry it out, for Samoval
+is a man to be handled carefully."
+
+"I'll handle him carefully, devil a fear," said Sir Terence.  "You
+can depend upon my tact."
+
+Colonel Grant rose.  "In this matter of Penalva, I will consider
+further.  But I do not think there is anything to be done now.  The
+main thing is to stop up the outlets through which information
+reaches the French, and that is my chief concern.  How is the
+stripping of the country proceeding now?"
+
+"It was more active immediately after Souza left the Government.
+But the last reports announce a slackening again."
+
+"They are at work in that, too, you see.  Souza will not slumber
+while there's vengeance and self-interest to keep him awake."  And
+he held out his hand to take his leave.
+
+"You'll stay to luncheon?" said Sir Terence.  "It is about to be
+served."
+
+"You are very kind, Sir Terence."
+
+They descended, to find luncheon served already in the open under
+the trellis vine, and the party consisted of Lady O'Moy, Miss
+Armytage, Captain Tremayne, Major Carruthers, and Count Samoval,
+of whose presence this was the adjutant's first intimation.
+
+As a matter of fact the Count had been at Monsanto for the past
+hour, the first half of which he had spent most agreeably on the
+terrace with the ladies.  He had spoken so eulogistically of the
+genius of Lord Wellington and the valour of the British soldier,
+and, particularly-of the Irish soldier, that even Sylvia's
+instinctive distrust and dislike of him had been lulled a little
+for the moment.
+
+"And they must prevail," he had exclaimed in a glow of enthusiasm,
+his dark eyes flashing.  "It is inconceivable that they should ever
+yield to the French, although the odds of numbers may lie so
+heavily against them."
+
+"Are the odds of numbers so heavy?" said Lady O'Moy in surprise,
+opening wide those almost childish eyes of hers.
+
+"Alas! anything from three to five to one.  Ah, but why should we
+despond on that account?"  And his voice vibrated with renewed
+confidence.  "The country is a difficult one, easy to defend, and
+Lord Wellington's genius will have made the best of it.  There are,
+for example, the fortifications at Torres Vedras."
+
+"Ah yes!  I have heard of them.  Tell me about them, Count."
+
+"Tell you about them, dear lady?  Shall I carry perfumes to the
+rose?  What can I tell you that you do not know so much better than
+myself?"
+
+"Indeed, I know nothing.  Sir Terence is ridiculously secretive,"
+she assured him, with a little frown of petulance.  She realised
+that her husband did not treat her as an intelligent being to be
+consulted upon these matters.  She was his wife, and he had no right
+to keep secrets from her.  In fact she said so.
+
+"Indeed no," Samoval agreed.  "And I find it hard to credit that it
+should be so."
+
+"Then you forget," said Sylvia, "that these secrets are not Sir
+Terence's own.  They are the secrets of his office."
+
+"Perhaps so," said the unabashed Samoval.  "But if I were Sir
+Terence I should desire above all to allay my wife's natural anxiety.
+For I am sure you must be anxious, dear Lady O'Moy."'
+
+"Naturally," she agreed, whose anxieties never transcended the fit
+of her gowns or the suitability of a coiffure.  "But Terence is like
+that."
+
+"Incredible!" the Count protested, and raised his dark eyes to
+heaven as if invoking its punishment upon so unnatural a husband.
+"Do you tell me that you have never so much as seen the plans of
+these fortifications? "
+
+"The plans, Count!"  She almost laughed.
+
+"Ah!" he said.  "I dare swear then that you do not even know of
+their existence."  He was jocular now.
+
+"I am sure that she does not," said Sylvia, who instinctively felt
+that the conversation was following an undesirable course.
+
+"Then you are wrong," she was assured.  "I saw them once, a week
+ago, in Sir Terence's room."
+
+"Why, how would you know them if you saw them?" quoth Sylvia,
+seeking to cover what might be an indiscretion.
+
+"Because they bore the name: 'Lines of Torres Vedras.'  I remember."
+
+"And this unsympathetic Sir Terence did not explain them to you?"
+laughed Samoval.
+
+"Indeed, he did not."
+
+"In fact, I could swear that he locked them away from you at once?"
+the Count continued on a jocular note.
+
+"Not at once.  But he certainly locked them away soon after, and
+whilst I was still there."
+
+"In your place, then," said Samoval, ever on the same note of
+banter, "I should have been tempted to steal the key."
+
+"Not so easily done," she assured him.  "It never leaves his person.
+He wears it on a gold chain round his neck."
+
+"What, always?"
+
+"Always, I assure you."
+
+"Too bad," protested Samoval.  "Too bad, indeed.  What, then, should
+you have done, Miss Armytage?"
+
+It was difficult to imagine that he was drawing information from
+them, so bantering and frivolous was his manner; more difficult
+still to conceive that he had obtained any.  Yet you will observe
+that he had been placed in possession of two facts: that the plans
+of the lines of Torres Vedras were kept locked up in Sir Terence's
+own room - in the strong-box, no doubt - and that Sir Terence
+always carried the key on a gold chain worn round his neck.
+
+Miss Armytage laughed.  "Whatever I might do, I should not be
+guilty of prying into matters that my husband kept hidden."
+
+"Then you admit a husband's right to keep matters hidden from his
+wife?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Madam," Samoval bowed to her, "your future husband is to be envied
+on yet another count."
+
+And thus the conversation drifted, Samoval conceiving that he had
+obtained all the information of which Lady O'Moy was possessed, and
+satisfied that he had obtained all that for the moment he required.
+How to proceed now was a more difficult matter, to be very seriously
+considered - how to obtain from Sir Terence the key in question, and
+reach the plans so essential to Marshal Massena.
+
+He was at table with them, as you know, when Sip Terence and Colonel
+Grant arrived.  He and the colonel were presented to each other, and
+bowed with a gravity quite cordial on the part of Samoval, who was
+by far the more subtle dissembler of the two.  Each knew the other
+perfectly for what he was; yet each was in complete ignorance of
+the extent of the other's knowledge of himself; and certainly neither
+betrayed anything by his manner.
+
+At table the conversation was led naturally enough by Tremayne to
+Wellington's general order against duelling.  This was inevitable
+when you consider that it was a topic of conversation that morning
+at every table to which British officers sat down.  Tremayne spoke
+of the measure in terms of warm commendation, thereby provoking a
+sharp disagreement from Samoval.  The deep and almost instinctive
+hostility between these two men, which had often been revealed in
+momentary flashes, was such that it must invariably lead them to
+take opposing sides in any matter admitting of contention.
+
+"In my opinion it is a most arbitrary and degrading enactment," said
+Samoval.  "I say so without hesitation, notwithstanding my profound
+admiration and respect for Lord Wellington and all his measures."
+
+"Degrading?" echoed Grant, looking across at him.  "In what can it
+be degrading, Count?"
+
+"In that it reduces a gentleman to the level of the clod," was the
+prompt answer.  "A gentleman must have his quarrels, however sweet
+his disposition, and a means must be afforded him of settling them."
+
+"Ye can always thrash an impudent fellow," opined the adjutant.
+
+"Thrash?" echoed Samoval.  His sensitive lip curled in disdain.
+"To use your hands upon a man!"  He shuddered in sheer disgust.
+"To one of my temperament it would be impossible, and men of my
+temperament are plentiful, I think."
+
+"But if you were thrashed yourself?" Tremayne asked him, and the
+light in his grey eyes almost hinted at a dark desire to be himself
+the executioner.
+
+Samoval's dark, handsome eyes considered the captain steadily.  "To
+be thrashed myself?" he questioned.  "My dear Captain, the idea of
+having hands laid upon me, soiling me, brutalising me, is so
+nauseating, so repugnant, that I assure you I should not hesitate to
+shoot the man who did it just as I should shoot any other wild beast
+that attacked me.  Indeed the two instances are exactly parallel,
+and my country's courts would uphold in such a case the justice of
+my conduct."
+
+"Then you may thank God," said O'Moy, "that you are not under
+British jurisdiction."
+
+"I do," snapped Samoval, to make an instant recovery: "at least so
+far as the matter is concerned."  And he elaborated: "I assure you,
+sirs, it will be an evil day for the nobility of any country when
+its Government enacts against the satisfaction that one gentleman
+has the right to demand from another who offends him."
+
+"Isn't the conversation rather too bloodthirsty for a luncheon-table?"
+wondered Lady O'Moy.  And tactlessly she added, thinking with
+flattery to mollify Samoval and cool his obvious heat: "You are
+yourself such a famous swordsman, Count."
+
+And then Tremayne's dislike of the man betrayed him into his
+deplorable phrase.
+
+"At the present time Portugal is in urgent need of her famous
+swordsmen to go against the French and not to increase the
+disorders at home."
+
+A silence complete and ominous followed the rash words, and Samoval,
+white to the lips, pondered the imperturbable captain with a baleful
+eye.
+
+"I think," he said at last, speaking slowly and softly, and picking
+his words with care, "I think that is innuendo.  I should be
+relieved, Captain Tremayne, to hear you say that it is not."
+
+Tremayne was prompt to give him the assurance.  "No innuendo at all.
+A plain statement of fact."
+
+"The innuendo I suggested lay in the application of the phrase.  Do
+you make it personal to myself?"
+
+"Of course not," said Sir Terence, cutting in and speaking sharply.
+"What an assumption!"
+
+"I am asking Captain Tremayne," the Count insisted, with grim
+firmness, notwithstanding his deferential smile to Sir Terence.
+
+"I spoke quite generally, sir," Tremayne assured him, partly under
+the suasion of Sir Terence's interposition, partly out of
+consideration for the ladies, who were looking scared.  "Of course,
+if you choose to take it to yourself, sir, that is a matter for your
+own discretion.  I think," he added, also with a smile, "that the
+ladies find the topic tiresome."
+
+"Perhaps we may have the pleasure of continuing it when they are no
+longer present."
+
+"Oh, as you please," was the indifferent answer.  "Carruthers, may
+I trouble you to pass the salt?  Lady O'Callaghan was complaining
+the other night of the abuse of salt in Portuguese cookery.  It is
+an abuse I have never yet detected."
+
+"I can't conceive Lady O'Callaghan complaining of too much salt in
+anything, begad," quoth O'Moy, with a laugh.  "If you had heard the
+story she told me about - "
+
+"Terence, my dear!" his wife checked him, her fine brows raised, her
+stare frigid.
+
+"Faith, we go from bad to worse," said Carruthers.  "Will you try
+to improve the tone of the conversation, Miss Armytage?  It stands
+in urgent need of it."
+
+With a general laugh, breaking the ice of the restraint that was in
+danger of settling about the table, a semblance of ease was restored,
+and this was maintained until the end of the repast.  At last the
+ladies rose, and, leaving the men at table, they sauntered off
+towards the terrace.  But under the archway Sylvia checked her
+cousin.
+
+"Una," she said gravely, "you had better call Captain Tremayne and
+take him away for the present."
+
+Una's eyes opened wide.  "Why?" she inquired.
+
+Miss Armytage was almost impatient with her.  "Didn't you see?
+Resentment is only slumbering between those men.  It will break
+out again now that we have left them unless you can get Captain
+Tremayne away."
+
+Una continued to look at her cousin, and then, her mind fastening
+ever upon the trivial to the exclusion of the important, her glance
+became arch.  "For whom is your concern?  For Count Samoval or Ned?"
+she inquired, and added with a laugh: "You needn't answer me.  It
+is Ned you are afraid for."
+
+"I am certainly not afraid for him," was the reply on a faint note
+of indignation.  She had reddened slightly.  "But I should not like
+to see Captain Tremayne or any other British officer embroiled in
+a duel.  You forget Lord Wellington's order which they were
+discussing, and the consequences of infringing it."
+
+Lady O'Moy became scared.
+
+"You don't imagine - "
+
+Sylvia spoke quickly: "I am certain that unless you take Captain
+Tremayne away, and at once, there will! be serious trouble."
+
+And now behold Lady O'Moy thrown into a state of alarm that bordered
+upon terror.  She had more reason than Sylvia could dream, more
+reason she conceived than Sylvia herself, to wish to keep Captain
+Tremayne out of trouble just at present.  Instantly, agitatedly,
+she turned and called to him.
+
+"Ned!" floated her silvery voice across the enclosed garden.  And
+again: "Ned! I want you at once, please."
+
+Captain Tremayne rose.  Grant was talking briskly at the time, his
+intention being to cover Tremayne's retreat, which he himself
+desired.  Count Samoval's smouldering eyes were upon the captain,
+and full of menace.  But he could not be guilty of the rudeness of
+interrupting Grant or of detaining Captain Tremayne when a lady
+called him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE CHALLENGE
+
+
+Rebuke awaited Captain Tremayne at the hands of Lady O'Moy, and
+it came as soon as they were alone together sauntering in the
+thicket of pine and cork-oak on the slope of the hill below the
+terrace.
+
+"How thoughtless of you, Ned, to provoke Count Samoval at such a
+time as this!"
+
+"Did I provoke him?  I thought it was the Count himself who was
+provoking."  Tremayne spoke lightly.
+
+"But suppose anything were to happen to you?  You know the man's
+dreadful reputation."
+
+Tremayne looked at her kindly.  This apparent concern for himself
+touched him.  "My dear Una, I hope I can take care of myself, even
+against so formidable a fellow; and after all a man must take his
+chances a soldier especially."
+
+"But what of Dick?" she cried.  "Do you forget that he is depending
+entirely upon you - that if you should fail him he will be lost?"
+And there was something akin to indignation in the protesting eyes
+she turned upon him.
+
+For a moment Tremayne was so amazed that he was at a loss for an
+answer.  Then he smiled.  Indeed his inclination was to laugh
+outright.  The frank admission that her concern which he had fondly
+imagined to be for himself was all for Dick betrayed a state of
+mind that was entirely typical of Una.  Never had she been able to
+command more than one point of view of any question, and that point
+of view invariably of her own interest.  All her life she had been
+accustomed to sacrifices great and small made by others on heir own
+behalf, until she had come to look upon such sacrifices her absolute
+right.
+
+"I am glad you reminded me," he said with an irony that never
+touched her.  "You may depend upon me to be discreetness itself, at
+least until after Dick has been safely shipped."
+
+"Thank you, Ned.  You are very good to me."  They sauntered a little
+way in silence.  Then: "When does Captain Glennie sail?" she asked
+him.  "Is it decided yet?"
+
+"Yes.  I have just heard from him that the Telemachus will put to
+sea on Sunday morning at two o'clock."
+
+"At two o'clock in the morning!  What an uncomfortable hour!"
+
+"Tides, as King Canute discovered, are beyond mortal control.  The
+Telemachus goes out with the ebb.  And, after all, for our purposes
+surely no hour could be more suitable.  If I come for Dick at
+midnight tomorrow that will just give us time to get him snugly
+aboard before she sails.  I have made all arrangements with Glennie.
+He believes Dick to be what he has represented himself - one of
+Bearsley's overseers named Jenkinson, who is a friend of mine and
+who must be got out of the country quietly.  Dick should thank his
+luck for a good deal.  My chief anxiety was lest his presence here
+should be discovered by any one."
+
+"Beyond Bridget not a soul knows that he is here not even Sylvia."
+
+"You have been the soul of discreetness."
+
+"Haven't I?" she purred, delighted to have him discover a virtue so
+unusual in her.
+
+Thereafter they discussed details; or, rather, Tremayne discussed
+them.  He would come up to Monsanto at twelve o'clock to-morrow
+night in a curricle in which he would drive Dick down to the river
+at a point where a boat would be waiting to take him out to the
+Telemachus.  She must see that Dick was ready in time.  The rest
+she could safely leave to him.  He would come in through the
+official wing of the building.  The guard would admit him without
+question, accustomed to seeing him come and go at all hours, nor
+would it be remarked that he was accompanied by a man in civilian
+dress when he departed.  Dick was to be let; down from her ladyship's
+balcony to the quadrangle by a rope ladder with which Tremayne
+would come equipped, having procured it for the purpose from the
+Telemachus.
+
+She hung upon his arm, overwhelming him now with her gratitude,
+her parasol sheltering them both from the rays of the sun as they
+emerged from the thicket intro the meadowland in full view of the
+terrace where Count Samoval and Sir Terence were at that moment
+talking earnestly together.
+
+You will remember that O'Moy had undertaken to provide that Count
+Samoval's visits to Monsanto should be discontinued.  About this
+task he had gone with all the tact of which he had boasted himself
+master to Colquhoun Grant.  You shall judge of the tact for yourself.
+No sooner had the colonel left for Lisbon, and Carruthers to return
+to his work, than, finding himself alone with the Count, Sir Terence
+considered the moment a choice one in which to broach the matter.
+
+"I take it ye're fond of walking, Count," had been his singular
+opening move.  They had left the table by now, and were sauntering
+together on the terrace.
+
+"Walking?" said Samoval.  "I detest it."
+
+"And is that so?  Well, well!  Of course it's not so very far from
+your place at Bispo."
+
+"Not more than half-a-league, I should say."
+
+"Just so," said O'Moy.  "Half-a-league there, and half-a-league back:
+a league.  It's nothing at all, of course; yet for a gentleman who
+detests walking it's a devilish long tramp for nothing."
+
+"For nothing?"  Samoval checked and looked at his host in faint
+surprise.  Then he smiled very affably.  "But you must not say that,
+Sir Terence.  I assure you that the pleasure of seeing yourself and
+Lady O'Moy cannot be spoken of as nothing."
+
+"You are very good." Sir Terence was the very quintessence of
+courtliness, of concern for the other.  "But if there were not that
+pleasure?"
+
+"Then, of course, it would be different." Samoval was beginning to
+be slightly intrigued.
+
+"That's it," said Sir Terence.  "That's just what I'm meaning."
+
+"Just what you're meaning?  But, my dear General, you are assuming
+circumstances which fortunately do not exist."
+
+"Not at present, perhaps.  But they might."
+
+Again Samoval stood still and looked at O'Moy.  He found something
+in the bronzed, rugged face that was unusually sardonic.  The blue
+eyes seemed to have become hard, and yet there were wrinkles about
+their corners suggestive of humour that might be mockery.  The Count
+stiffened; but beyond that he preserved his outward calm whilst
+confessing that he did not understand Sir Terence's meaning.
+
+"It's this way," said Sir Terence.  "I've noticed that ye're not
+looking so very well lately, Count."
+
+"Really?  You think that?"  The words were mechanical.  The dark
+eyes continued to scrutinise that bronzed face suspiciously.
+
+"I do, and it's sorry I am to see it.  But I know what it is.  It's
+this walking backwards and forwards between here and Bispo that's
+doing the mischief.  Better give it up, Count.  Better not come
+toiling up here any more.  It's not good for your health.  Why, man,
+ye're as white as a ghost this minute."
+
+He was indeed, having perceived at last the insult intended.  To be
+denied the house at such a time was to checkmate his designs, to set
+a term upon his crafty and subtle espionage, precisely in the season
+when he hoped to reap its harvest.  But his chagrin sprang not at
+all from that.  His cold anger was purely personal.  He was a
+gentleman - of the fine flower, as he would have described himself -
+of the nobility of Portugal; and that a probably upstart Irish
+soldier - himself, from Samoval's point of view, a guest in that
+country - should deny him his house, and choose such terms of
+ill-considered jocularity in which to do it, was an affront beyond
+all endurance.
+
+For a moment passion blinded him, and it was only by an effort that
+he recovered and kept his self-control.  But keep it he did.  You
+may trust your practised duellist for that when he comes face to
+face with the necessity to demand satisfaction.  And soon the mist
+of passion clearing from his keen wits, he sought swiftly for a
+means to fasten the quarrel upon Sir Terence in Sir Terence's own
+coin of galling mockery.  Instantly he found it.  Indeed it was not
+very far to seek.  O'Moy's jealousy, which was almost a byword, as
+we know, had been apparent more than once to Samoval.  Remembering
+it now, it discovered to him at once Sir Terence's most vulnerable
+spot, and cunningly Samoval proceeded to gall him there.
+
+A smile spread gradually over his white face - a smile of
+immeasurable malice.
+
+"I am having a very interesting and instructive morning in this
+atmosphere of Irish boorishness," said he.  "First Captain
+Tremayne - "
+
+"Now don't be after blaming old Ireland for Tremayne's shortcomings.
+Tremayne's just a clumsy mannered Englishman."
+
+"I am glad to know there is a distinction.  Indeed I might have
+perceived it for myself.  In motives, of course, that distinction
+is great indeed, and I hope that I am not slow to discover it, and
+in your case to excuse it.  I quite understand and even sympathise
+with your feelings, General."
+
+"I am glad of that now," said Sir Terence, who had understood
+nothing of all this.
+
+"Naturally," the Count pursued on a smooth, level note of amiability,
+"when a man, himself no longer young, commits the folly of taking a
+young and charming wife, he is to be forgiven when a natural anxiety
+drives him to lengths which in another might be resented."  He bowed
+before the empurpling Sir Terence.
+
+"Ye're a damned coxcomb, it seems," was the answering roar.
+
+"Of course you would assume it.  It was to be expected.  I condone
+it with the rest.  And because I condone it, because I sympathise
+with what in a man of your age and temperament must amount to an
+affliction, I hasten to assure you upon my honour that so far as
+I am concerned there are no grounds for your anxiety."
+
+"And who the devil asks for your assurances? It's stark mad ye are
+to suppose that I ever needed them."
+
+"Of course you must say that," Samoval insisted, with a confident
+and superior smile.  He shook his head, his expression one of
+amused sorrow.  "Sir Terence, you have knocked at the wrong door.
+You are youthful at least in your impulsiveness, but you are surely
+as blind as old Pantaloon in the comedy or you would see where your
+industry would be better employed in shielding your wife's honour
+and your own."
+
+Goaded to fury, his blue eyes aflame now with passion, Sir Terence
+considered the sleek and subtle gentleman before him, and it was in
+that moment that the Count's subtlety soared to its finest heights.
+In a flash of inspiration he perceived the advantages to be drawn by
+himself from conducting this quarrel to extremes.
+
+This is not mere idle speculation.  Knowledge of the real motives
+actuating him rests upon the evidence of a letter which Samoval was
+to write that same evening to La Fleche - afterwards to be
+discovered - wherein he related what had passed, how deliberately
+he had steered the matter, and what he meant to do.  His object was
+no longer the punishing of an affront.  That would happen as a mere
+incident, a thing done, as it were, in passing.  His real aim now
+was to obtain the keys of the adjutant's strong-box, which never
+left Sir Terence's person, and so become possessed of the plans of
+the lines of Torres Vedras.  When you consider in the light of this
+the manner in which Samoval proceeded now you will admire with me
+at once the opportunism and the subtlety of the man.
+
+"You'll be after telling me exactly what you mean," Sir Terence
+had said.
+
+It was in that moment that Tremayne and Lady O'Moy came arm in arm
+into the open on the hill-side, half-a-mile away - very close and
+confidential.  They came most opportunely to the Count's need, and
+he flung out a hand to indicate them to Sir Terence, a smile of
+pity on his lips.
+
+"You need but to look to take the answer for yourself," said he.
+
+Sir Terence looked, and laughed.  He knew the sect of Ned Tremayne's
+heart and could laugh now with relish at that which hitherto had
+left him darkly suspicious.
+
+"And who shall blame Lady O'Moy?" Count Samoval pursued.  "A
+lady so charming and so courted must seek her consolation for the
+almost unnatural union Fate has imposed upon her.  Captain Tremayne
+is of her own age, convenient to her hand, and for an Englishman
+not ill-looking."
+
+He smiled at O'Moy with insolent compassion, and O'Moy, losing all
+his self-control, struck him slapped him resoundingly upon the cheek.
+
+"Ye're a dirty liar, Samoval, a muck-rake," said he.
+
+Samoval stepped back, breathing hard, one cheek red, the other
+white. Yet by a miracle he still preserved his self-control.
+
+"I have proved my courage too often," he said, "to be under the
+necessity of killing you for this blow.  Since my honour is safe I
+will not take advantage of your overwrought condition."
+
+"Ye'll take advantage of it whether ye like it or not," blazed Sir
+Terence at him.  "I mean you to take advantage of it.  D' ye think
+I'll suffer any man to cast a slur upon Lady O'Moy?  I'll be
+sending my friends to wait on you to-day, Count; and - by God! -
+Tremayne himself shall be one of them."
+
+Thus did the hot-headed fellow deliver himself into the hands of
+his enemy.  Nor was he warned when he saw the sudden gleam in
+Samoval's dark eyes.
+
+"Ha!" said the Count.  It was a little exclamation of wicked
+satisfaction.  "You are offering me a challenge, then?"
+
+"If I may make so bold.  And as I've a mind to shoot you dead - "
+
+"Shoot, did you say?" Samoval interrupted gently.
+
+"I said 'shoot' -and it shall be at ten paces, or across a
+handkerchief, or any damned distance you please."
+
+The Count shook his head.  He sneered.  "I think not - not shoot."
+And he waved the notion aside with a hand white and slender as a
+woman's.  "That is too English, or too Irish.  The pistol, I mean
+ - appropriately a fool's weapon."  And he explained himself,
+explained at last his extraordinary forbearance under a blow.  "If
+you think I have practised the small-sword every day of my life for
+ten years to suffer myself to be shot at like a rabbit in the end
+ - ho, really!"  He laughed aloud.  "You have challenged me, I
+think, Sir Terence.  Because I feared the predilection you have
+discovered, I was careful to wait until the challenge came from you.
+The choice of weapons lies, I think, with me.  I shall instruct my
+friends to ask for swords."
+
+"Sorry a difference will it make to me," said Sir Terence.  "Anything
+from a horsewhip to a howitzer."  And then recollection descending
+like a cold hand upon him chilled his hot rage, struck the fine Irish
+arrogance all out of him, and left him suddenly limp.  "My God!" he
+said, and it was almost a groan.  He detained Samoval, who had
+already turned to depart.  "A moment, Count," he cried.  "I - I had
+forgotten.  There is the general order - Lord Wellington's enactment."
+
+"Awkward, of course," said Samoval, who had never for a moment been
+oblivious of that enactment, and who had been carefully building
+upon it.  "But you should have considered it before committing
+yourself so irrevocably."
+
+Sir Terence steadied himself.  He recovered his truculence.
+"Irrevocable or not, it will just have to be revocable.  The
+meeting's impossible."
+
+"I do not see the impossibility.  I am not surprised you should
+shelter yourself behind an enactment; but you will remember this
+enactment does not apply to me, who am not a soldier."
+
+"But it applies to me, who am not only a soldier, but the
+Adjutant-General here, the man chiefly responsible for seeing the
+order carried out.  It would be a fine thing if I were the first
+to disregard it."
+
+"I am afraid it is too late.  You have disregarded it already,
+sir."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"The letter of the law is against sending or receiving a challenge,
+I think."
+
+O'Moy was distracted.  "Samoval," he said, drawing himself up, "I
+will admit that I have been a fool.  I will apologise to you for
+the blow and for the word that accompanied it."
+
+"The apology would imply that my statement was a true one and that
+you recognised it.  If you mean that - "
+
+"I mean nothing of the kind.  Damme!  I've a mind to horsewhip you,
+and leave it at that.  D' ye think I want to face a firing party on
+your account?"
+
+"I don't think there is the remotest likelihood of any such
+contingency," replied Samoval.
+
+But O'Moy went headlong on.  "And another thing.  Where will I be
+finding a friend to meet your friends?  Who will dare to act for me
+in view of that enactment?"
+
+The Count considered.  He was grave now.  "Of course that is a
+difficulty," he admitted, as if he perceived it now for the first
+time.  "Under the circumstances, Sir Terence, and entirely to
+accommodate you, I might consent to dispense with seconds."
+
+"Dispense with seconds?" Sir Terence was horrified at the suggestion.
+"You know that that is irregular - that a charge of murder would lie
+against the survivor."
+
+"Oh, quite so.  But it is for your own convenience that I suggest
+it, though I appreciate your considerate concern on the score of
+what may happen to me afterwards should it come to be known that I
+was your opponent."
+
+"Afterwards?  After what?"
+
+"After I have killed you."
+
+"And is it like that?" cried O'Moy, his countenance inflaming again,
+his mind casting all prudence to the winds.
+
+It followed, of course, that without further thought for anything
+but the satisfaction of his rage Sir Terence became as wax in the
+hands of Samoval's desires.
+
+"Where do you suggest that we meet?" he asked.
+
+"There is my place at Bispo.  We should be private in the gardens
+there.  As for time, the sooner the better, though for secrecy's
+sake we had better meet at night.  Shall we say at midnight?"
+
+But Sir Terence would agree to none of this.
+
+"To-night is out of the question for me.  I have an engagement
+that will keep me until late.  To-morrow night, if you will, I
+shall be at your service."  And because he did not trust Samoval
+he added, as Samoval himself had almost reckoned: "But I should
+prefer not to come to Bispo.  I might be seen going or returning."
+
+"Since there are no such scruples on my side, I am ready to come
+to you here if you prefer it."
+
+"It would suit me better."
+
+"Then expect me promptly at midnight to-morrow, provided that you
+can arrange to admit me without my being seen.  You will perceive
+my reasons."
+
+"Those gates will be closed," said O'Moy, indicating the now gaping
+massive doors that closed the archway at night.  "But if you knock
+I shall be waiting for you, and I will admit you by the wicket."
+
+"Excellent," said Samoval suavely.  "Then - until to-morrow night,
+General."  He bowed with almost extravagant submission, and turning
+walked sharply away, energy and suppleness in every line of his
+slight figure, leaving Sir Terence to the unpleasant, almost
+desperate, thoughts that reflection must usher in as his anger
+faded.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE DUEL
+
+
+It was a time of stress and even of temptation for Sir Terence.
+Honour and pride demanded that he should keep the appointment made
+with Samoval; common sense urged him at all costs to avoid it.  His
+frame of mind, you see, was not at all enviable.  At moments he
+would consider his position as adjutant-general, the enactment
+against duelling, the irregularity of the meeting arranged, and,
+consequently, the danger in which he stood on every score; at others
+he could think of nothing but the unpardonable affront that had been
+offered him and the venomously insulting manner in which it had been
+offered, and his rage welled up to blot out every consideration
+other than that of punishing Samoval.
+
+For two days and a night he was a sort of shuttlecock tossed between
+these alternating moods, and he was still the same when he paced the
+quadrangle with bowed head and hands clasped behind him awaiting
+Samoval at a few minutes before twelve of the following night.  The
+windows that looked down from the four sides of that enclosed garden
+were all in darkness.  The members of the household had withdrawn
+over an hour ago and were asleep by now.  The official quarters were
+closed.  The rising moon had just mounted above the eastern wing and
+its white light fell upon the upper half of the facade of the
+residential site.  The quadrangle itself remained plunged in gloom.
+
+Sir Terence, pacing there, was considering the only definite
+conclusion he had reached.  If there were no way even now of avoiding
+this duel, at least it must remain secret.  Therefore it could not
+take place here in the enclosed garden of his own quarters, as he
+had so rashly consented.  It should be fought upon neutral ground,
+where the presence of the body of the slain would not call for
+explanations by the survivor.
+
+>From distant Lisbon on the still air came softly the chimes of
+midnight, and immediately there was a sharp rap upon the little
+door set in one of the massive gates that closed the archway.
+
+Sir Terence went to open the wicket, and Samoval stepped quickly
+over the sill.  He was wrapped in a dark cloak, a broad-brimmed
+hat obscured his face.  Sir Terence closed the door again.  The
+two men bowed to each other in silence, and as Samoval's cloak fell
+open he produced a pair of duelling-swords swathed together in a
+skin of leather.
+
+"You are very punctual, sir," said O'Moy.
+
+"I hope I shall never be so discourteous as to keep an opponent
+waiting.  It is a thing of which I have never yet been guilty,"
+replied Samoval, with deadly smoothness in that reminder of his
+victorious past.  He stepped forward and looked about the
+quadrangle.  "I am afraid the moon will occasion us some delay,"
+he said.  "It were perhaps better to wait some five or ten
+minutes, by then the light in here should have improved."
+
+"We can avoid the delay by stepping out into the open," said Sir
+Terence.  "Indeed it is what I had to suggest in any case.  There
+are inconveniences here which you may have overlooked."
+
+But Samoval, who had purposes to serve of which this duel was but
+a preliminary, was of a very different mind.
+
+"We are quite private here, your household being abed," he answered,
+"whilst outside one can never be sure even at this hour of avoiding
+witnesses and interruption.  Then, again, the turf is smooth as a
+table on that patch of lawn, and the ground well known to both of
+us; that, I can assure you, is a very necessary condition in the
+dark and one not to be found haphazard in the open."
+
+"But there is yet another consideration, sir.  I prefer that we
+engage on neutral ground, so that the survivor shall not be called
+upon for explanations that might be demanded if we fought here."
+
+Even in the gloom Sir Terence caught the flash of Samoval's
+white teeth as he smiled.
+
+"You trouble yourself unnecessarily on my account," was the smoothly
+ironic answer.  "No one has seen me come, and no one is likely to
+see me depart."
+
+"You may be sure that no one shall, by God," snapped O'Moy, stung
+by the sly insolence of the other's assurance.
+
+"Shall we get to work, then?" Samoval invited.
+
+"If you're set on dying here, I suppose I must be after humouring
+you, and make the best of it.  As soon as you please, then."  O'Moy
+was very fierce.
+
+They stepped to the patch of lawn in the middle of the quadrangle,
+and there Samoval threw off altogether his cloak and hat.  He was
+closely dressed in black, which in that light rendered him almost
+invisible.  Sir Terence, less practised and less calculating in
+these matters, wore an undress uniform, the red coat of which showed
+greyish.  Samoval observed this rather with contempt than with
+satisfaction in the advantage it afforded him.  Then he removed the
+swathing from the swords, and, crossing them, presented the hilts to
+Sir Terence.  The adjutant took one and the Count retained the other,
+which he tested, thrashing the air with it so that it hummed like a
+whip.  That done, however, he did not immediately fall on.
+
+"In a few minutes the moon will be more obliging," he suggested.
+"If you would prefer to wait - "
+
+But it occurred to Sir Terence that in the gloom the advantage might
+lie slightly with himself, since the other's superior sword-play
+would perhaps be partly neutralised.  He cast a last look round at
+the dark windows.
+
+"I find it light enough," he answered.
+
+Samoval's reply was instantaneous.  "On guard, then," he cried,
+and on the words, without giving Sir Terence so much as time to
+comply with the invitation, he whirled his point straight and
+deadly at the greyish outline of his opponent's body.  But a ray
+of moonlight caught the blade and its livid flash gave Sir Terence
+warning of the thrust so treacherously delivered.  He saved himself
+by leaping backwards - just saved himself with not an inch to spare
+ - and threw up his blade to meet the thrust.
+
+"Ye murderous villain," he snarled under his breath, as steel ground
+on steel, and he flung forward to the attack.
+
+But from the gloom came a little laugh to answer him, and his angry
+lunge was foiled by an enveloping movement that ended in a ripost.
+With that they settled down to it, Sir Terence in a rage upon which
+that assassin stroke had been fresh fuel; the Count cool and
+unhurried, delaying until the moonlight should have crept a little
+farther, so as to enable him to make quite sure that his stroke when
+delivered should be final.
+
+Meanwhile he pressed Sir Terence towards the side where the
+moonlight would strike first, until they were fighting close under
+the windows of the residential wing, Sir Terence with his back to
+them, Samoval facing them.  It was Fate that placed them so, the
+Fate that watched over Sir Terence even now when he felt his
+strength failing him, his sword arm turning to lead under the strain
+of an unwonted exercise.  He knew himself beaten, realised the
+dexterous ease, the masterly economy of vigour and the deadly
+sureness of his opponent's play.  He knew that he was at the mercy
+of Samoval; he was even beginning to wonder why the Count should
+delay to make an end of a situation of which he was so completely
+master.  And then, quite suddenly, even as he was returning thanks
+that he had taken the precaution of putting all his affairs in order,
+something happened.
+
+A light showed; it flared up suddenly, to be as suddenly extinguished,
+and it had its source in the window of Lady O'Moy's dressing-room,
+which Samoval was facing.
+
+That flash drawing off the Count's eyes for one instant, and leaving
+them blinded for another, had revealed him clearly at the same time
+to Sir Terence.  Sir Terence's blade darted in, driven by all that
+was left of his spent strength, and Samoval, his eyes unseeing, in
+that moment had fumbled widely and failed to find the other's steel
+until he felt it sinking through his body, searing him from breast
+to back.
+
+His arms sank to his sides quite nervelessly.  He uttered a faint
+exclamation of astonishment, almost instantly interrupted by a cough.
+He swayed there a moment, the cough increasing until it choked him.
+Then, suddenly limp, he pitched forward upon his face, and lay
+clawing and twitching at Sir Terence's feet.
+
+Sir Terence himself, scarcely realising what had taken place, for
+the whole thing had happened within the time of a couple of
+heart-beats, stood quite still, amazed and awed, in a half-crouching
+attitude, looking down at the body of the fallen man.  And then from
+above, ringing upon the deathly stillness, he caught a sibilant
+whisper:
+
+"What was that? 'Sh!"
+
+He stepped back softly, and flattened himself instinctively against
+the wall; thence profoundly intrigued and vaguely alarmed on several
+scores he peered up at the windows of his wife's room whence the
+sound had come, whence the sudden light had come which - as he now
+realised - had given him the victory in that unequal contest.
+Looking up at the balcony in whose shadow he stood concealed, he
+saw two figures there - his wife's and another's - and at the same
+time he caught sight of something black that dangled from the narrow
+balcony, and peered more closely to discover a rope ladder.
+
+He felt his skin roughening, bristling like a dog's; he was conscious
+of being cold from head to foot, as if the flow of his blood had
+been suddenly arrested; and a sense of sickness overcame him.  And
+then to turn that horrible doubt of his into still more horrible
+certainty came a man's voice, subdued, yet not so subdued but that
+he recognised it for Ned Tremayne's.
+
+"There's some one lying there.  I can make out the figure."
+
+"Don't go down!  For pity's sake, come back.  Come back and wait,
+Ned.  If any one should come and find you we shall be ruined."
+
+Thus hoarsely whispering, vibrating with terror, the voice of his
+wife reached O'Moy, to confirm him the unsuspecting blind cuckold
+that Samoval had dubbed him to his face, for which Samoval - warning
+the guilty pair with his last breath even as he had earlier so
+mockingly warned Sir Terence - had coughed up his soul on the turf
+of that enclosed garden.
+
+Crouching there for a moment longer, a man bereft of movement and
+of reason, stood O'Moy, conscious only of pain, in an agony of mind
+and heart that at one and the same time froze his blood and drew
+the sweat from his brow.
+
+Then he was for stepping out into the open, and, giving flow to the
+rage and surging violence that followed, calling down the man who
+had dishonoured him and slaying him there under the eyes of that
+trull who had brought him to this shame.  But he controlled the
+impulse, or else Satan controlled it for him.  That way, whispered
+the Tempter, was too straight and simple.  He must think.  He must
+have time to readjust his mind to the horrible circumstances so
+suddenly revealed.
+
+Very soft and silently, keeping well within the shadow of the wall,
+he sidled to the door which he had left ajar.  Soundlessly he pushed
+it open, passed in and as soundlessly closed it again.  For a moment
+he stood leaning heavily against its timbers, his breath coming in
+short panting sobs.  Then he steadied himself and turning, made his
+way down the corridor to the little study which had been fitted up
+for him in the residential wing, and where sometimes he worked at
+night.  He had been writing there that evening ever since dinner,
+and he had quitted the room only to go to his assignation with
+Samoval, leaving the lamp burning on his open desk.
+
+He opened the door, but before passing in he paused a moment,
+straining his ears to listen for sounds overhead.  His eyes,
+glancing up and down, were arrested by a thin blade of light under
+a door at the end of the corridor.  It was the door of the butler's
+pantry, and the line of light announced that Mullins had not yet
+gone to bed.  At once Sir Terence understood that, knowing him to
+be at work, the old servant had himself remained below in case his
+master should want anything before retiring.
+
+Continuing to move without noise, Sir Terence entered his study,
+closed the door and crossed to his desk.  Wearily he dropped into
+the chair that stood before it, his face drawn and ghastly, his
+smouldering eyes staring vacantly ahead.  On the desk before him
+lay the letters that he had spent the past hours in writing - one
+to his wife; another to Tremayne; another to his brother in Ireland;
+and several others connected with his official duties, making
+provision for their uninterrupted continuance in the event of his
+not surviving the encounter.
+
+Now it happened that amongst the latter there was one that was
+destined hereafter to play a considerable part; it was a note for
+the Commissary-General upon a matter that demanded immediate
+attention, and the only one of all those letters that need now
+survive.  It was marked "Most Urgent," and had been left by him
+for delivery first thing in the morning.  He pulled open a drawer
+and swept into it all the letters he had written save that one.
+
+He locked that drawer; then unlocked another, and took thence a
+case of pistols.  With shaking hands he lifted out one of the
+weapons to examine it, and all the while, of course, his thoughts
+were upon his wife and Tremayne.  He was considering how
+well-founded had been his every twinge of jealousy; how wasted, how
+senseless the reactions of shame that had followed them; how
+insensate his trust in Tremayne's honesty, and, above all, with
+what crafty, treacherous subtlety Tremayne had drawn a red herring
+across the trail of his suspicions by pretending to an unutterable
+passion for Sylvia Armytage.  It was perhaps that piece of duplicity,
+worthy, he thought, of the Iscariot himself, that galled Sir
+Terence now most sorely; that and the memory of his own silly
+credulity.  He had been such a ready dupe.  How those two together
+must have laughed at him!  Oh, Tremayne had been very subtle!  He
+had been the friend, the quasi-brother, parading his affection for
+the Butler family to excuse the familiarities with Lady O'Moy which
+he had permitted himself under Sir Terence's very eyes.  O'Moy
+thought of them as he had seen them in the garden on the night of
+Redondo's ball, remembered the air of transparent honesty by which
+that damned hypocrite when discovered had deflected his just
+resentment.
+
+Oh, there was no doubt that the treacherous blackguard had been
+subtle.  But - by God! - subtlety should be repaid with subtlety!
+He would deal with Tremayne as cruelly as Tremayne had dealt with
+him; and his wanton wife, too, should be repaid in kind.  He beheld
+the way clear, in a flash of wicked inspiration.  He put back the
+pistol, slapped down the lid of the box and replaced it in its
+drawer.
+
+He rose, took up the letter to the Commissary-general, stepped
+briskly to the door and pulled it open.
+
+"Mullins!" he called sharply.  "Are you there?  Mullins?"
+
+Came the sound of a scraping chair, and instantly that door at the
+end of the corridor was thrown open, and Mullins stood silhouetted
+against the light behind him.  A moment he stood there, then came
+forward.
+
+"You called, Sir Terence?"
+
+"Yes." Sir Terence's voice was miraculously calm.  His back was to
+the light and his face in shadow, so that its drawn, haggard look
+was not perceptible to the butler.  "I am going to bed.  But first
+I want you to step across to the sergeant of the guard with this
+letter for the Commissary-General.  Tell him that it is of the
+utmost importance, and ask him to arrange to have it taken into
+Lisbon first thing in the morning."
+
+Mullins bowed, venerable as an archdeacon in aspect and bearing, as
+he received the letter from his master: "Certainly, Sir Terence."
+
+As he departed Sir Terence turned and slowly paced back to his desk,
+leaving the door open.  His eyes had narrowed; there was a cruel,
+an almost evil smile on his lips.  Of the generous, good-humoured
+nature imprinted upon his face every sign had vanished.  His
+countenance was a mask of ferocity restrained by intelligence, cold
+and calculating.
+
+Oh, he would pay the score that lay between himself and those two
+who had betrayed him.  They should receive treachery for treachery,
+mockery for mockery, and for dishonour death.  They had deemed him
+an old fool!  What was the expression that Samoval had used -
+Pantaloon in the comedy?  Well, well!  He had been Pantaloon in the
+comedy so far.  But now they should find him Pantaloon in the tragedy
+ - nay, not Pantaloon at all, but Polichinelle, the sinister jester,
+the cynical clown, who laughs in murdering.  And in anguished
+silence should they bear the punishment he would mete out to them,
+or else in no less anguished speech themselves proclaim their own
+dastardy to the world.
+
+His wife he beheld now in a new light.  It was out of vanity and
+greed that she had married him, because of the position in the world
+that he could give her.  Having done so, at least she might have
+kept faith; she might have been honest, and abided by the bargain.
+If she had not done so, it was because honesty was beyond her
+shallow nature.  He should have seen before what he now saw so
+clearly.  He should have known her for a lovely, empty husk; a
+silly, fluttering butterfly; a toy; a thing of vanities, emotions,
+and nothing else.
+
+Thus Sir Terence, cursing the day when he had mated with a fool.
+Thus Sir Terence whilst he stood there waiting for the outcry
+from Mullins that should proclaim the discovery of the body, and
+afford him a pretext for having the house searched for the slayer.
+Nor had he long to wait.
+
+"Sir Terence!  Sir Terence!  For God's sake, Sir Terence!" he
+heard the voice of his old servant.  Came the loud crash of the
+door thrust back until it struck the wall and quick steps along the
+passage.
+
+Sir Terence stepped out to meet him.
+
+"Why, what the devil - " he was beginning in his bluff, normal tones,
+when the servant, showing a white, scared face, cut him short.
+
+"A terrible thing, Sir Terence!  Oh, the saints protect us, a
+dreadful thing!  This way, sir!  There's a man killed - Count Samoval,
+I think it is!"
+
+"What? Where?"
+
+"Out yonder, in the quadrangle, sir."
+
+"But - " Sir Terence checked.  "Count Samoval, did ye say?
+Impossible!" and he went out quickly, followed by the butler.
+
+In the quadrangle he checked.  In the few minutes that were sped
+since he had left the place the moon had overtopped the roof of
+the opposite wing, so that full upon the enclosed garden fell now
+its white light, illumining and revealing.
+
+There lay the black still form of Samoval supine, his white face
+staring up into the heavens, and beside him knelt Tremayne, whilst
+in the balcony above leaned her ladyship.  The rope ladder, Sir
+Terence's swift glance observed, had disappeared.
+
+He halted in his advance, standing at gaze a moment.  He had hardly
+expected so much.  He had conceived the plan of causing the house
+to be searched immediately upon Mullins's discovery of the body.
+But Tremayne's rashness in adventuring down in this fashion spared
+him even that necessity.  True, it set up other difficulties.  But
+he was not sure that the matter would not be infinitely more
+interesting thus.
+
+He stepped forward, and came to a standstill beside the two - his
+dead enemy and his living one.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+POLICHINELLE
+
+
+"Why, Ned," he asked gravely, "what has happened?"
+
+"It is Samoval," was Tremayne's quiet answer.  "He is quite dead."
+
+He stood up as he spoke, and Sir Terence observed with terrible
+inward mirth that his tone had the frank and honest ring, his
+bearing the imperturbable ease which more than once before had
+imposed upon him as the outward signs of an easy conscience.  This
+secretary of his was a cool scoundrel.
+
+"Samoval, is it?" said Sir Terence, and went down on one knee
+beside the body to make a perfunctory examination.  Then he looked
+up at the captain.
+
+"And how did this happen?"
+
+"Happen?" echoed Tremayne, realising that the question was being
+addressed particularly to himself.  "That is what I am wondering.
+I found him here in this condition."
+
+"You found him here?  Oh, you found him here in this condition!
+Curious!"  Over his shoulder he spoke to the butler: "Mullins, you
+had better call the guard."  He picked up the slender weapon that
+lay beside Samoval.  "A duelling sword!"  Then he looked searchingly
+about him until his eyes caught the gleam of the other blade near
+the wall, where himself he had dropped it.  "Ah!" he said, and went
+to pick it up.  "Very odd!"  He looked up at the balcony, over the
+parapet of which his wife was leaning.  "Did you see anything, my
+dear?" he asked, and neither Tremayne nor she detected the faint
+note of wicked mockery in the question.
+
+There was a moment's pause before she answered him, faltering:
+
+"N-no.  I saw nothing."  Sir Terence's straining ears caught no
+faintest sound of the voice that had prompted her urgently from
+behind the curtained windows.
+
+"How long have you been there?" he asked her.
+
+"A - a moment only," she replied, again after a pause.  "I - I
+thought I heard a cry, and - and I came to see what had happened."
+Her voice shook with terror; but what she beheld would have been
+quite enough to account for that.
+
+The guard filed in through the doors from the official quarters,
+a sergeant with a halbert in one hand and a lantern in the other,
+followed by four men, and lastly by Mullins.  They halted and came
+to attention before Sir Terence.  And almost at the same moment
+there was a sharp rattling knock on the wicket in the great closed
+gates through which Samoval had entered.  Startled, but without
+showing any signs of it, Sir Terence bade Mullins go open, and in
+a general silence all waited to see who it was that came.
+
+A tall man, bowing his shoulders to pass under the low lintel of
+that narrow door, stepped over the sill and into the courtyard.  He
+wore a cocked hat, and as his great cavalry cloak fell open the
+yellow rays of the sergeant's lantern gleamed faintly on a British
+uniform.  Presently, as he advanced into the quadrangle, he
+disclosed the aquiline features of Colquhoun Grant.
+
+"Good-evening, General.  Good-evening, Tremayne," he greeted one
+and the other.  Then his eyes fell upon the body lying between
+them.  "Samoval, eh?  So I am not mistaken in seeking him here.  I
+have had him under very close observation during the past day or
+two, and when one of my men brought me word tonight that he had
+left his place at Bispo on foot and alone, going along the upper
+Alcantara road, If had a notion that he might be coming to Monsanto
+and I followed.  But I hardly expected to find this.  How has it
+happened?"
+
+"That is what I was just asking Tremayne," replied Sir Terence.
+"Mullins discovered him here quite by chance with the body."
+
+"Oh!" said Grant, and turned to the captain.  "Was it you then - "
+
+"I?" interrupted Tremayne with sudden violence.  He seemed now to
+become aware for the first time of the gravity of his position.
+"Certainly not, Colonel Grant.  I heard a cry, and I came out to see
+what it was.  I found Samoval here, already dead."
+
+"I see," said Grant.  "You were with Sir Terence, then, when this - "
+
+"Nay," Sir Terence interrupted.  "I have been alone since dinner,
+clearing up some arrears of work.  I was in my study there when
+Mullins called me to tell me what he had discovered.  It looks as
+if there had been a duel.  Look at these swords."  Then he turned
+to his secretary.  "I think, Captain Tremayne," he said gravely,
+"that you had better report yourself under arrest to your colonel."
+
+Tremayne stiffened suddenly.  "Report myself under arrest?" he
+cried.  "My God, Sir Terence, you don't believe that I - "
+
+Sir Terence interrupted him.  The voice in which he spoke was
+stern, almost sad; but his eyes gleamed with fiendish mockery the
+while.  It was Polichinelle that spoke - Polichinelle that mocks
+what time he slays.  "What were you doing here?" he asked, and it
+was like moving the checkmating piece.
+
+Tremayne stood stricken and silent.  He cast a desperate upward
+glance at the balcony overhead.  The answer was so easy, but it
+would entail delivering Richard Butler to his death.  Colonel Grant,
+following his upward glance, beheld Lady O'Moy for the first time.
+He bowed, swept off his cocked hat, and "Perhaps her ladyship," he
+suggested to Sir Terence, "may have seen something."
+
+"I have already asked her," replied O'Moy.
+
+And then she herself was feverishly assuring Colonel Grant that she
+had seen nothing at all, that she had heard a cry and had come
+out on to the balcony to see what was happening.
+
+"And was Captain Tremayne here when you came out?" asked O'Moy, the
+deadly jester.
+
+"Ye-es," she faltered.  "I was only a moment or two before yourself."
+
+"You see?" said Sir Terence heavily to Grant, and Grant, with pursed
+lips, nodded, his eyes moving from O'Moy to Tremayne.
+
+"But, Sir Terence," cried Tremayne, "I give you my word - I swear to
+you - that I know absolutely nothing of how Samoval met his death."
+
+"What were you doing here?" O'Moy asked again, and this time the
+sinister, menacing note of derision vibrated clearly in the question.
+
+Tremayne for the first time in his honest, upright life found himself
+deliberately choosing between truth and falsehood.  The truth would
+clear him - since with that truth he would produce witnesses to it,
+establishing his movements completely.  But the truth would send a
+man to his death; and so for the sake of that man's life he was
+driven into falsehood.
+
+"I was on my way to see you," he said.
+
+"At midnight?" cried Sir Terence on a note of grim doubt.  "To what
+purpose?"
+
+"Really, Sir Terence, if my word is not sufficient, I refuse to
+submit to cross-examination."
+
+Sir Terence turned to the sergeant of the guard, "How long is it
+since Captain Tremayne arrived?" he asked.
+
+The sergeant stood to attention.  "Captain Tremayne, sir, arrived
+rather more than half-an-hour ago.  He came in a curricle, which
+is still waiting at the gates."
+
+"Half-an-hour ago, eh?" said Sir Terence, and from Colquhoun Grant
+there was a sharp and audible intake of breath, expressive either
+of understanding, or surprise, or both.  The adjutant looked at
+Tremayne again.  "As my questions seem only to entangle you further,"
+he said, "I think you had better do as I suggest without more
+protests: report yourself under arrest to Colonel Fletcher in the
+morning, sir."
+
+Still Tremayne hesitated for a moment.  Then drawing himself up, he
+saluted curtly.  "Very well, sir," he replied.
+
+"But, Terence - " cried her ladyship from above.
+
+"Ah?" said Sir Terence, and he looked up.  "You would say - ?" he
+encouraged her, for she had broken off abruptly, checked again -
+although none below could guess it - by the one behind who prompted
+her.
+
+"Couldn't you - couldn't you wait?" she was faltering, compelled to
+it by his question.
+
+"Certainly.  But for what?" quoth he, grimly sardonic.
+
+"Wait until you have some explanation," she concluded lamely.
+
+"That will be the business of the court-martial," he answered.
+"My duty is quite clear and simple; I think.  You needn't wait,
+Captain Tremayne."
+
+And so, without another word, Tremayne turned and departed.  The
+soldiers, in compliance with the short command issued by Sir Terence,
+took up the body and bore it away to a room in the official quarters;
+and in their wake went Colonel Grant, after taking his leave of Sir
+Terence.  Her ladyship vanished from the balcony and closed her
+windows, and finally Sir Terence, followed by Mullins, slowly,
+with bowed head and dragging steps, reentered the house.  In the
+quadrangle, flooded now by the cold, white light of the moon, all
+was peace once more.  Sir Terence turned into his study, sank into
+the chair by his desk and sat there awhile staring into vacancy, a
+diabolical smile upon his handsome, mobile mouth.  Gradually the
+smile faded and horror overspread his face.  Finally he flung
+himself forward and buried his head in his arms.
+
+There were steps in the hall outside, a quick mutter of voices,
+and then the door of his study was flung open, and Miss Armytage
+came sharply to rouse him.
+
+"Terence!  What has happened to Captain Tremayne?"
+
+He sat up stiffly, as she sped across the room to him.  She was
+wrapped in a blue quilted bed-gown, her dark hair hung in two heavy
+plaits, and her bare feet had been hastily thrust into slippers.
+
+Sir Terence looked at her with eyes that were dull and heavy and
+that yet seemed to search her white, startled face.
+
+She set a hand on his shoulder, and looked down into his ravaged,
+haggard countenance.  He seemed suddenly to have been stricken into
+an old man.
+
+"Mullins has just told me that Captain Tremayne has been ordered
+under arrest for - for killing Count Samoval.  Is it true?  Is it
+true?" she demanded wildly.
+
+"It is true," he answered her, and there was a heavy, sneering
+curl on his upper lip.
+
+"But - "  She stopped, and put a hand to her throat; she looked as
+if she would stifle.  She sank to her knees beside him, and caught
+his hand in both her own that were trembling.  "Oh, you can't
+believe it!  Captain Tremayne is not the man to do a murder."
+
+"The evidence points to a duel," he answered dully.
+
+"A duel!"  She looked at him, and then, remembering what had passed
+that morning between Tremayne and Samoval, remembering, too, Lord
+Wellington's edict, "Oh, God!" she gasped.  "Why did you let them
+take him?"
+
+"They didn't take him.  I ordered him under arrest.  He will
+report himself to Colonel Fletcher in the morning."
+
+"You ordered him?  You!  You, his friend!"  Anger, scorn, reproach
+and sorrow all blending in her voice bore him a clear message.
+
+He looked down at her most closely, and gradually compassion crept
+into his face.  He set his hands on her shoulders, she suffering it
+passively, insensibly.
+
+"You care for him, Sylvia?" he said, between inquiry and wonder.
+"Well, well!  We are both fools together, child.  The man is a
+dastard, a blackguard, a Judas, to be repaid with betrayal for
+betrayal.  Forget him, girl.  Believe me, he isn't worth a thought."
+
+"Terence!"  She looked in her turn into that distorted face.  "Are
+you mad?" she asked him.
+
+"Very nearly," he answered, with a laugh that was horrible to hear.
+
+She drew back and away from him, bewildered and horrified.  Slowly
+she rose to her feet.  She controlled with difficulty the deep
+emotion swaying her.  "Tell me," she said slowly, speaking with
+obvious effort, "what will they do to Captain Tremayne?"
+
+"What will they do to him?"  He looked at her.  He was smiling.
+"They will shoot him, of course."
+
+"And you wish it!" she denounced him in a whisper of horror.
+
+"Above all things," he answered.  "A more poetic justice never
+overtook a blackguard."
+
+"Why do you call him that?  What do you mean?"
+
+"I will tell you - afterwards, after they have shot him; unless
+the truth comes out before."
+
+"What truth do you mean?  The truth of how Samoval came by his
+death?"
+
+"Oh, no.  That matter is quite clear, the evidence complete.  I
+mean - oh, I will tell you afterwards what I mean.  It may help
+you to bear your trouble, thankfully."
+
+She approached him again.  "Won't you tell me now?" she begged him.
+
+"No," he answered, rising, and speaking with finality.  "Afterwards
+if necessary, afterwards.  And now get back to bed, child, and
+forget the fellow.  I swear to you that he isn't worth a thought.
+Later I shall hope to prove it to you."
+
+"That you never will," she told him fiercely.
+
+He laughed, and again his laugh was harsh and terrible in its bitter
+mockery.  "Yet another trusting fool," he cried.  "The world is full
+of them - it is made up of them, with just a sprinkling of knaves to
+batten on their folly.  Go to bed, Sylvia, and pray for understanding
+of men.  It is a possession beyond riches."
+
+"I think you are more in need of it than I am," she told him, standing
+by the door.
+
+"Of course you do.  You trust, which is why you are a fool.  Trust,"
+he said, speaking the very language of Polichinelle, "is the livery
+of fools."
+
+She went without answering him and toiled upstairs with dragging
+feet.  She paused a moment in the corridor above, outside Una's
+door.  She was in such need of communion with some one that for a
+moment she thought of going in.  But she knew beforehand the
+greeting that would await her; the empty platitudes, the obvious
+small change of verbiage which her ladyship would dole out.  The
+very thought of it restrained her, and so she passed on to her own
+room and a sleepless night in which to piece together the puzzle
+which the situation offered her, the amazing enigma of Sir Terence's
+seeming access of insanity.
+
+And the only conclusion that she reached was that intertwined with
+the death of Samoval there was some other circumstance which had
+aroused in the adjutant an unreasoning hatred of his friend,
+converting him into Tremayne's bitterest enemy, intent - as he had
+confessed - upon seeing him shot for that night's work.  And because
+she knew them both for men of honour above all, the enigma was
+immeasurably deepened.
+
+Had she but obeyed the transient impulse to seek Lady O'Moy she
+might have discovered all the truth at once.  For she would have
+come upon her ladyship in a frame of mind almost as distraught as
+her own; and she might - had she penetrated to the dressing-room
+where her ladyship was - have come upon Richard Butler at the same
+time.
+
+Now, in view of what had happened, her ladyship, ever impulsive,
+was all for going there and then to her husband to confess the whole
+truth, without pausing to reflect upon the consequences to others
+than Ned Tremayne.  As you know, it was beyond her to see a thing
+from two points of view at one and the same time.  It was also beyond
+her brother - the failing, as I think I have told you, was a family
+one - and her brother saw this matter only from the point of view of
+his own safety.
+
+"A single word to Terence," he had told her, putting his back to
+the door of the dressing-room to bar her intended egress, "and you
+realise that it will be a court-martial and a firing party for me."
+
+That warning effectively checked her.  Yet certain stirrings of
+conscience made her think of the man who had imperilled himself for
+her sake and her brother's.
+
+"But, Dick, what is to become of Ned? " she had asked him.
+
+"Oh, Ned will be all right.  What is the evidence against him after
+all?  Men are not shot for things they haven't done.  Justice will
+out, you know.  Leave Ned to shift for himself for the present.
+Anyhow his danger isn't grave, nor is it immediate, and mine is."
+
+Helplessly distraught, she sank to an ottoman.  The night had
+been a very trying one for her ladyship.  She gave way to tears.
+
+"It is all your fault, Dick," she reproached him.
+
+" Naturally you would blame me," he said with resignation - the
+complete martyr.
+
+"If only you had been ready at the time, as he told you to be,
+there would have been no delays, and you would have got away
+before any of this happened."
+
+"Was it my fault that I should have reopened my wound - bad luck to
+it! - in attempting to get down that damned ladder?" he asked her.
+"Is it my fault that I am neither an ape nor an acrobat?  Tremayne
+should have come up at once to assist me, instead of waiting until
+he had to come up to help me bandage my leg again.  Then time would
+not have been lost, and very likely my life with it."  He came to a
+gloomy conclusion.
+
+"Your life? What do you mean, Dick?"
+
+"Just that.  What are my chances of getting away now?" he asked her.
+"Was there ever such infernal luck as mine?  The Telemachus will
+sail without me, and the only man who could and would have helped
+me to get out of this damned country is under arrest.  It's clear I
+shall have to shift for myself again, and I can't even do that for
+a day or two with my leg in this state.  I shall have to go back
+into that stuffy store-cupboard of yours till God knows when."  He
+lost all self-control at the prospect and broke into imprecations
+of his luck.
+
+She attempted to soothe him.  But he wasn't easy to soothe.
+
+"And then," he grumbled on, "you have so little sense that you want
+to run straight off to Terence and explain to him what Tremayne
+was doing here.  You might at least have the grace to wait until I
+am off the premises, and give me the mercy of a start before you set
+the dogs on my trail."
+
+"Oh, Dick, Dick, you are so cruel!" she protested.  "How can you
+say such things to me, whose only thought is for you, to save you."
+
+"Then don't talk any more about telling Terence," he replied.
+
+"I won't, Dick.  I won't." She drew him down beside her on the
+ottoman and her fingers smoothed his rather tumbled red hair, just
+as her words attempted to smooth the ruffles in his spirit.
+"You know I did didn't realise, or I should not have thought of
+it even.  I was so concerned for Ned for the moment."
+
+"Don't I tell you there's not the need?" he assured her.  "Ned will
+be safe enough, devil a doubt.  It's for you to keep to what you
+told them from the balcony; that you heard a cry, went out to see
+what was happening and saw Tremayne there bending over the body.
+Not a word more, and not a word less, or it will be all over
+with me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE CHAMPION
+
+
+With the possible exception of her ladyship, I do not think that
+there was much sleep that night at Monsanto for any of the four
+chief actors in this tragicomedy.  Each had his own preoccupations.
+Sylvia's we know.  Mr. Butler found his leg troubling him again,
+and the pain of the reopened wound must have prevented him from
+sleeping even had his anxieties about his immediate future not
+sufficed to do so.  As for Sir Terence, his was the most deplorable
+case of all.  This man who had lived a life of simple and downright
+honesty in great things and in small, a man who had never stooped
+to the slightest prevarication, found himself suddenly launched upon
+the most horrible and infamous course of duplicity to encompass the
+ruin of another.  The offence of that other against himself might
+be of the most foul and hideous, a piece of treachery that only
+treachery could adequately avenge; yet this consideration was not
+enough to appease the clamours of Sir Terence's self-respect.
+
+In the end, however, the primary desire for vengeance and vengeance
+of the bitterest kind proved master of his mind.  Captain Tremayne
+had been led by his villainy into a coil that should presently crush
+him, and Sir Terence promised himself an infinite balm for his
+outraged honour in the entertainment which the futile struggles of
+the victim should provide.  With Captain Tremayne lay the cruel
+choice of submitting in tortured silence to his fate, or of turning
+craven and saving his miserable life by proclaiming himself a
+seducer and a betrayer.  It should be interesting to observe how
+the captain would decide, and his punishment was certain whatever
+the decision that he took.
+
+Sir Terence came to breakfast in the open, grey-faced and haggard,
+but miraculously composed for a man who had so little studied the
+art of concealing his emotions.  Voice and glance were calm as he
+gave a good-morning to his wife and to Miss Armytage.
+
+"What are you going to do about Ned?" was one of his wife's first
+questions.
+
+It took him aback.  He looked askance at her, marvelling at the
+steadiness with which she bore his glance, until it occurred to him
+that effrontery was an essential part of the equipment of all
+harlots.
+
+"What am I going to do?" he echoed.  "Why, nothing.  The matter is
+out of my hands.  I may be asked to give evidence; I may even be
+called to sit upon the court-martial that will try him.  My evidence
+can hardly assist him.  My conclusions will naturally be based upon
+the evidence that is laid before the court."
+
+Her teaspoon rattled in her saucer.  "I don't understand you,
+Terence.  Ned has always been your best friend."
+
+"He has certainly shared everything that was mine."
+
+"And you know," she went on, "that he did not kill Samoval."
+
+"Indeed?" His glance quickened a little.  "How should I know that?"
+
+"Well . . . I know it, anyway."
+
+He seemed moved by that statement.  He leaned forward with an odd
+eagerness, behind which there was something terrible that went
+unperceived by her.
+
+"Why did you not say so before?  How do you know?  What do you know?"
+
+"I am sure that he did not."
+
+"Yes, yes.  But what makes you so sure?  Do you possess some
+knowledge that you have not revealed?"
+
+He saw the colour slowly shrinking from her cheeks under his
+burning gaze.  So she was not quite shameless then, after all.
+There were limits to her effrontery.
+
+"What knowledge should I possess?" she filtered.
+
+"That is what I am asking."
+
+She made a good recovery.  "I possess the knowledge that you should
+possess yourself," she told him.  "I know Ned for a man incapable of
+such a thing.  I am ready to swear that he could not have done it."
+
+"I see: evidence as to character."  He sack back into his chair and
+thoughtfully stirred his chocolate.  "It may weigh with the court.
+But I am not the court, and my mere opinions can do nothing for Ned
+Tremayne."
+
+Her ladyship looked at him wildly.  "The court?" she cried.  "Do
+you mean that I shall have to give evidence?"
+
+"Naturally," he answered.  "You will have to say what you saw."
+
+"But - but I saw nothing."
+
+"Something, I think."
+
+"Yes; but nothing that can matter."
+
+"Still the court will wish to hear it and perhaps to examine you
+upon it."
+
+"Oh no, no!" In her alarm shy half rose, then sank again to her
+chair.  "You must keep me out of this, Terence.  I couldn't - I
+really couldn't,"
+
+He laughed with an affectation of indulgence, masking something
+else.
+
+"Why," he said, "you would not deprive Tremayne of any of the
+advantages to be derived from your testimony?  Are you not ready
+to bear witness as to his character?  To swear that from your
+knowledge of the man you are sure he could not have done such a
+thing?  That he is the very soul of honour, a man incapable of
+anything base or treacherous or sly?"
+
+And then at last Sylvia, who had been watching them, and seeking
+to apply to what she heard the wild expressions that Sir Terence
+had used to herself last night, broke into the conversation.
+
+"Why do you apply these words to Captain Tremayne?" she asked.
+
+He turned sharply to meet the opposition he detected in her.  "I
+don't apply them.  On the contrary, I say that, as Una knows, they
+are not applicable."
+
+"Then you make an unnecessary statement, a statement that has
+nothing to do with the case.  Captain Tremayne has been arrested
+for killing Count Samoval in a duel.  A duel may be a violation of
+the law as recently enacted by Lord Wellington, but it is not an
+offence against honour; and to say that a man cannot have fought a
+duel because a man is incapable of anything base or treacherous or
+sly is just to say a very foolish and meaningless thing."
+
+"Oh, quite so," the adjutant, admitted.  "But if Tremayne denies
+having fought, if he shelters himself behind a falsehood, and says
+that he has not killed Samoval, then I think the statement assumes
+some meaning."
+
+"Does Captain Tremayne say that?" she asked him sharply.
+
+"It is what I understood him to say last night when I ordered him
+under arrest."
+
+"Then," said Sylvia, with full conviction, "Captain Tremayne did
+not do it."
+
+"Perhaps he didn't," Sir Terence admitted.  "The court will no doubt
+discover the truth.  The truth, you know, must prevail," and he
+looked at his wife again, marking the fresh signs of agitation she
+betrayed.
+
+Mullins coming to set fresh covers, the conversation was allowed to
+lapse.  Nor was it ever resumed, for at that moment, with no other
+announcement save such as was afforded by his quick step and the
+click-click of his spurs, a short, slight man entered the quadrangle
+from the doorway of the official wing.
+
+The adjutant, turning to look, caught his breath suddenly in an
+exclamation of astonishment.
+
+"Lord Wellington!" he cried, and was immediately on his feet.
+
+At the exclamation the new-comer checked and turned.  He wore a
+plain grey undress frock and white stock, buckskin breeches and
+lacquered boots, and he carried a riding-crop tucked under his left
+arm.  His features were bold and sternly handsome; his fine eyes
+singularly piercing and keen in their glance; and the sweep of those
+eyes now took in not merely the adjutant, but the spread table and
+the ladies seated before it.  He halted a moment, then advanced
+quickly, swept his cocked hat from a brown head that was but very
+slightly touched with grey, and bowed with a mixture of stiffness
+and courtliness to the ladies.
+
+"Since I have intruded so unwittingly, I had best remain to make my
+apologies," he said.  "I was on my way to your residential quarters,
+O'Moy, not imagining that I should break in upon your privacy in
+this fashion."
+
+O'Moy with a great deference made haste to reassure him on the score
+of the intrusion, whilst the ladies themselves rose to greet him.
+He bore her ladyship's hand to his lips with perfunctory courtesy,
+then insisted upon her resuming her chair.  Then he bowed - ever
+with that mixture of stiffness and deference - to Miss Armytage
+upon her being presented to him by the adjutant.
+
+"Do not suffer me to disturb you," he begged them.  "Sit down,
+O'Moy.  I am not pressed, and I shall be monstrous glad of a few
+moments' rest.  You are very pleasant here," and he looked about
+the luxuriant garden with approving eyes.
+
+Sir Terence placed the hospitality of his table at his lordship's
+disposal.  But the latter declined graciously.
+
+"A glass of wine and water, if you will.  No more.  I breakfasted
+at Torres Vedras with Fletcher."  Then to the look of astonishment
+on the faces of the ladies he smiled.  "Oh yes," he assured them,
+"I was early astir, for time is very precious just at present,
+which is why I drop unannounced upon you from the skies, O'Moy."
+He took the glass that Mullins proffered on a salver, sipped from
+it, and set it down.  "There is so much vexation, so much hindrance
+from these pestilential intriguers here in Lisbon, that I have
+thought it as well to come in person and speak plainly to the
+gentlemen of the Council of Regency."  He was peeling off his stout
+riding-gloves as he spoke.  "If this campaign is to go forward at
+all, it will go forward as I dispose.  Then, too, I wanted to see
+Fletcher and the works.  By gad, O'Moy, he has performed miracles,
+and I am very pleased with him - oh, and with you too.  He told me
+how ably you have seconded him and counselled him where necessary.
+You must have worked night and day, O'Moy."  He sighed.  "I wish
+that I were as well served in every direction."  And then he broke
+off abruptly.  "But this is monstrous tedious for your ladyship,
+and for you, Miss Armytage.  Forgive me."
+
+Her ladyship protested the contrary, professing a deep interest
+in military matters, and inviting his lordship to continue.  Lord
+Wellington, however, ignoring the invitation, turned the
+conversation upon life in Lisbon, inquiring hopefully whether they
+found the place afforded them adequate entertainment.
+
+"Indeed yes," Lady O'Moy assured him.  "We are very gay at times.
+There are private theatricals and dances, occasionally an official
+ball, and we are promised picnics and water-parties now that the
+summer is here."
+
+"And in the autumn, ma'am, we may find you a little hunting," his
+lordship promised them.  "Plenty of foxes; a rough country, though;
+but what's that to an Irishwoman?"  He caught the quickening of
+Miss Armytage's eye.  "The prospect interests you, I see."
+
+Miss Armytage admitted it, and thus they made conversation for a
+while, what time the great soldier sipped his wine and water to
+wash the dust of his morning ride from his throat.  When at last
+he set down an empty glass Sir Terence took this as the intimation
+of his readiness to deal with official matters, and, rising, he
+announced himself entirely at his lordship's service.
+
+Lord Wellington claimed his attention for a full hour with the
+details of several matters that are not immediately concerned with
+this narrative.  Having done, he rose at last from Sir Terence's
+desk, at which he had been sitting, and took up his riding-crop
+and cocked hat from the chair where he had placed them.
+
+"And now," he said, "I think I will ride into Lisbon and endeavour
+to come to an understanding with Count Redondo and Don Miguel
+Forjas."
+
+Sir Terence advanced to open the door.  But Wellington checked him
+with a sudden sharp inquiry.
+
+"You published my order against duelling, did you not?"
+
+"Immediately upon receiving it, sir."
+
+"Ha! It doesn't seem to have taken long for the order to be
+infringed, then."  His manner was severe.  his eyes stern.  Sir
+Terence was conscious of a quickening of his pulses.  Nevertheless
+his answer was calmly regretful:
+
+"I am afraid not."
+
+The great man nodded.  "Disgraceful!  I heard of it from Fletcher
+this morning.  Captain What's-his-name had just reported himself
+under arrest, I understand, and Fletcher had received a note from
+you giving the grounds for this.  The deplorable part of these
+things is that they always happen in the most troublesome manner
+conceivable.  In Berkeley's case the victim was a nephew of the
+Patriarch's.  Samoval, now, was a person of even greater
+consequence, a close friend of several members of the Council.
+His death will be deeply resented, and may set up fresh
+difficulties.  It is monstrous vexatious."  And abruptly he asked
+"What did they quarrel about?"
+
+O'Moy trembled, and his glance avoided the other's gimlet eye.
+"The only quarrel that I am aware of between them," he said, "was
+concerned with this very enactment of your lordship's.  Samoval
+proclaimed it infamous, and Tremayne resented the term.  Hot words
+passed between them, but the altercation was allowed to go no
+further at the time by myself and others who were present."
+
+His lordship had raised his brows.  "By gad, sir," he ejaculated,
+"there almost appears to be some justification for the captain.
+He was one of your military secretaries, was he not?"
+
+"He was."
+
+"Ha!  Pity!  Pity!"  His lordship was thoughtful for a moment.
+Then he dismissed the matter.  "But then orders are orders, and
+soldiers must learn to obey implicitly.  British soldiers of all
+degrees seem to find the lesson difficult.  We must inculcate it
+more sternly, that is all."
+
+O'Moy's honest soul was in torturing revolt against the falsehoods
+he had implied - and to this man of all men, to this man whom he
+reverenced above all others, who stood to him for the very fount
+of military honour and lofty principle!  He was in such a mood
+that one more question on the subject from Wellington and the whole
+ghastly truth must have come pouring from his lips.  But no other
+question came.  Instead his lordship turned on the threshold and
+held out his hand.
+
+"Not a step farther, O'Moy.  I've left you a mass of work, and
+you are short of a secretary.  So don't waste any of your time on
+courtesies.  I shall hope still to find the ladies in the garden
+so that I may take my leave without inconveniencing them."
+
+And he was gone, stepping briskly with clicking spurs, leaving
+O'Moy hunched now in his chair, his body the very expression of the
+dejection that filled his soul.
+
+In the garden his lordship came upon Miss Armytage alone, still
+seated by the table under the trellis, from which the cloth had by
+now been removed.  She rose at his approach and in spite of gesture
+to her to remain seated.
+
+"I was seeking Lady O'Moy," said he, "to take my leave of her.  I
+may not have the pleasure of coming to Monsanto again."
+
+"She is on the terrace, I think," said Miss Armytage.  "I will
+find her for your lordship."
+
+"Let us find her together," he said amiably, and so turned and
+went with her towards the archway.  "You said your name is
+Armytage, I think?" he commented.
+
+"Sir Terence said so."
+
+His eyes twinkled.  "You possess an exceptional virtue," said he.
+"To be truthful is common; to be accurate rare.  Well, then, Sir
+Terence said so.  Once I had a great friend of the name of Armytage.
+I have lost sight of him these many years.  We were at school
+together in Brussels."
+
+"At Monsieur Goubert's," she surprised him by saying.  "That would
+be John Armytage, my uncle."
+
+"God bless my soul, ma'am!" he ejaculated.  "But I gathered you
+were Irish, and Jack Armytage came from Yorkshire."
+
+"My mother is Irish, and we live in Ireland now.  I was born there.
+But father, none the less, was John Armytage's brother."
+
+He looked at her with increased interest, marking the straight,
+supple lines of her, and the handsome, high-bred face.  His
+lordship, remember, never lacked an appreciative eye for a fine
+woman.  "So you're Jack Armytage's niece.  Give me news of him, my
+dear."
+
+She did so.  Jack Armytage was well and prospering, had made a rich
+marriage and retired from the Blues many years ago to live at
+Northampton.  He listened with interest, and thus out of his boyhood
+friendship for her uncle, which of late years he had had no
+opportunity to express, sprang there and then a kindness for the
+niece.  Her own personal charms may have contributed to it, for the
+great soldier was intensely responsive to the appeal of beauty.
+
+
+They reached the terrace.  Lady O'Moy was nowhere in sight.  But
+Lord Wellington was too much engrossed in his discovery to be
+troubled.
+
+"My dear," he said, "if I can serve you at any timer both for Jack's
+sake and your own, I hope that you will let me know of it."
+
+She looked at him a moment, and he saw her colour come and go,
+arguing a sudden agitation.
+
+"You tempt me, sir," she said, with a wistful smile.
+
+"Then yield to the temptation, child," he urged her kindly, those
+keen, penetrating eyes of his perceiving trouble here.
+
+"It isn't for myself," she responded.  "Yet there is something I
+would ask you if I dare - something I had intended to ask you in
+any case if I could find the opportunity.  To be frank, that is
+why I was waiting there in the garden just now.  It was to waylay
+you.  I hoped for a word with you."
+
+"Well, well," he encouraged her.  "It should be the easier now,
+since in a sense we find that we are old friends."
+
+He was so kind, so gentle, despite that stern, strong face of his,
+that she melted at once to his persuasion.
+
+" It is about Lieutenant Richard Butler," she began.
+
+"Ah," said he lightly, "I feared as much when you said it was
+not for yourself you had a favour to ask."
+
+But, looking at him, she instantly perceived how he had
+misunderstood her.
+
+"Mr. Butler," she said, "is the officer who was guilty of the
+affair at Tavora."
+
+He knit his brow in thought.  "Butler-Tavora?" he muttered
+questioningly.  Suddenly his memory found what it was seeking.
+"Oh yes, the violated nunnery."  His thin lips tightened; the
+sternness of his ace increased.  "Yes?" he inquired, but the
+tone was now forbidding.
+
+Nevertheless she was not deterred.  "Mr. Butler is Lady O'Moy's
+brother," she said.
+
+He stared a moment, taken aback.  "Good God!  Ye don't say so,
+child!  Her brother!  O'Moy's brother-in-law!  And O'Moy never
+said a word to me about it.
+
+"What should he say?  Sir Terence himself pledged his word to
+the Council of Regency that Mr. Butler would be shot when taken."
+
+"Did he, egad!"  He was still further surprised out of his
+sternness.  "Something of a Roman this O'Moy in his conception of
+duty!  Hum!  The Council no doubt demanded this?"
+
+"So I understand, my lord.  Lady O'Moy, realising her brother's
+grave danger, is very deeply troubled."
+
+"Naturally," he agreed.  "But what can I do, Miss Armytage?
+What were the actual facts, do you happen to know?"
+
+She recited them, putting the case bravely for the scapegrace Mr.
+Butler, dwelling particularly upon the error under which he was
+labouring, that he had imagined himself to be knocking at the gates
+of a monastery of Dominican friars, that he had broken into the
+convent because denied admittance, and because he suspected some
+treacherous reason for that denial.
+
+He heard her out, watching her with those keen eyes of his the
+while.
+
+"Hum!  You make out so good a case for him that one might almost
+believe you instructed by the gentleman himself.  Yet I gather
+that nothing has since been heard of him?"
+
+"Nothing, sir, since he vanished from Tavora, nearly, two months ago.
+And I have only repeated to your lordship the tale that was told by
+the sergeant and the troopers who reported the matter to Sir Robert
+Craufurd on their return."
+
+He was very thoughtful.  Leaning on the balustrade, he looked out
+across the sunlit valley, turning his boldly chiselled profile to
+his companion.  At last he spoke slowly, reflectively: "But if this
+were really so - a mere blunder - I see no sufficient grounds to
+threaten him with capital punishment.  His subsequent desertion, if
+he has deserted - I mean if nothing has happened to him - is really
+the graver matter of the two."
+
+"I gathered, sir, that he was to be sacrificed to the Council of
+Regency - a sort of scapegoat."
+
+He swung round sharply, and the sudden blaze of his eyes almost
+terrified her.  Instantly he was cold again and inscrutable.  "Ah!
+You are oddly well informed throughout.  But of course you would
+be," he added, with an appraising look into that intelligent face
+in which he now caught a faint likeness of Jack Armytage.  "Well,
+well, my dear, I am very glad you have told me of this.  If Mr.
+Butler is ever taken and in danger - there will be a court-martial,
+of course - send me word of it, and I will see what I can do, both
+for your sake and for the sake of strict justice."
+
+"Oh, not for my sake," she protested, reddening slightly at the
+gentle imputation.  "Mr. Butler is nothing to me - that is to say,
+he is just my cousin.  It is for Una's sake that I am asking this."
+
+"Why, then, for Lady O'Moy's sake, since you ask it," he replied
+readily.  "But," he warned her, "say nothing of it until Mr. Butler
+is found."  It is possible he believed that Butler never would be
+found.  "And remember, I promise only to give the matter my
+attention.  If it is as you represent it, I think you may be sure
+that the worst that will befall Mr. Butler will be dismissal from
+the service.  He deserves that.  But I hope I should be the last
+man to permit a British officer to be used as a scapegoat or a
+burnt-offering to the mob or to any Council of Regency.  By the
+way, who told you this about a scapegoat?"
+
+"Captain Tremayne."
+
+"Captain Tremayne?  Oh, the man who killed Samoval?"
+
+"He didn't," she cried.
+
+On that almost fierce denial his lordship looked at her, raising
+his eyebrows in astonishment.
+
+"But I am told that he did, and he is under arrest for it this
+moment - for that, and for breaking my order against duelling."
+
+"You were not told the truth, my lord.  Captain Tremayne says that
+he didn't, and if he says so it is so."
+
+"Oh, of course, Miss Armytage!"  He was a man of unparalleled valour
+and boldness, yet so fierce was she in that moment that for the life
+of him he dared not have contradicted her.
+
+"Captain Tremayne is the most honourable man I know," she continued,
+"and if he had killed Samoval he would never have denied it; he
+would have proclaimed it to all the world."
+
+"There is no need for all this heat, my dear," he reassured her.
+"The point is not one that can remain in doubt.  The seconds of the
+duel will be forthcoming; and they will tell us who were the
+principals."
+
+"There were no seconds," she informed him.
+
+"No seconds!" he cried in horror.  "D' ye mean they just fought a
+rough and tumble fight?"
+
+"I mean they never fought at all.  As for this tale of a duel, I
+ask your lordship: Had Captain Tremayne desired a secret meeting
+with Count Samoval, would he have chosen this of all places in
+which to hold it?"
+
+"This?"
+
+"This.  The fight - whoever fought it - took place in the quadrangle
+there at midnight."
+
+He was overcome with astonishment, and he showed it.
+
+"Upon my soul," he said, "I do not appear to have been told any
+of the facts.  Strange that O'Moy should never have mentioned that,"
+he muttered, and then inquired suddenly: "Where was Tremayne
+arrested?"
+
+"Here," she informed him.
+
+"Here?  He was here, then, at midnight?  What was he doing here?"
+
+"I don't know.  But whatever he was doing, can your lordship
+believe that he would have come here to fight a secret duel?"
+
+"It certainly puts a monstrous strain upon belief," said he.  "But
+what can he have been doing here?"
+
+"I don't know," she repeated.  She wanted to add a warning of O'Moy.
+She was tempted to tell his lordship of the odd words that O'Moy
+had used to her last night concerning Tremayne.  But she hesitated,
+and her courage failed her.  Lord Wellington was so great a man,
+bearing the destinies of nations on his shoulders, and already he
+had wasted upon her so much of the time that belonged to the world
+and history, that she feared to trespass further; and whilst she
+hesitated came Colquhoun Grant clanking across the quadrangle
+looking for his lordship.  He had come up, he announced, standing
+straight and stiff before them, to see O'Moy, but hearing of Lord
+Wellington's presence, had preferred to see his lordship in the
+first instance.
+
+"And indeed you arrive very opportunely, Grant," his lordship
+confessed.
+
+He turned to take his leave of Jack Armytage's niece.
+
+"I'll not forget either Mr. Butler or Captain Tremayne," he promised
+her, and his stern face softened into a gentle, friendly smile.
+"They are very fortunate in their champion."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE WALLET
+
+
+"A queer, mysterious business this death of Samoval," said Colonel
+Grant.
+
+"So I was beginning to perceive," Wellington agreed, his brow dark.
+
+They were alone together in the quadrangle under the trellis,
+through which the sun, already high, was dappling the table at
+which his lordship sat.
+
+"It would be easier to read if it were not for the duelling swords.
+Those and the nature of Samoval's wound certainly point unanswerably
+to a duel.  Otherwise there would be considerable evidence that
+Samoval was a spy caught in the act and dealt with out of hand as
+he deserved."
+
+"How?  Count Samoval a spy?"
+
+"In the French interest," answered the colonel without emotion,
+"acting upon the instructions of the Souza faction, whose tool he
+had become."  And Colonel Grant proceeded to relate precisely what
+he knew of Samoval.
+
+Lord Wellington sat awhile in silence, cogitating.  Then he rose,
+and his piercing eyes looked up at the colonel, who stood a good
+head taller than himself.
+
+"Is this the evidence of which you spoke?"
+
+"By no means," was the answer.  "The evidence I have secured is
+much more palpable.  I have it here."  He produced a little wallet of
+red morocco bearing the initial "S " surmounted by a coronet.
+Opening it, he selected from it some papers, speaking the while.
+"I thought it as well before I left last night to make an examination
+of the body.  This is what I found, and it contains, among other
+lesser documents, these to which I would draw your lordship's
+attention.  First this."  And he placed in Lord Wellington's hand a
+holograph note from the Prince of Esslingen introducing the bearer,
+M. de la Fleche, his confidential agent, who would consult with the
+Count, and thanking the Count for the valuable information already
+received from him.
+
+His lordship sat down again to read the letter.  "It is a full
+confirmation of what you have told me," he said calmly.
+
+"Then this," said Colonel Grant, and he placed upon the table a
+note in French of the approximate number and disposition of the
+British troops in Portugal at the time.  "The handwriting is
+Samoval's own, as those who know it will have no difficulty in
+discerning.  And now this, sir."  He unfolded a small sketch map,
+bearing the title also in French: Probable position and extent of
+the fortifications north of Lisbon.
+
+"The notes at the foot," he added, "are in cipher, and it is the
+ordinary cipher employed by the French, which in itself proves how
+deeply Samoval was involved.  Here is a translation of it."  And he
+placed before his chief a sheet of paper on which Lord Wellington
+read:
+
+"This is based upon my own personal knowledge of the country, odd
+scraps of information received from time to time, and my personal
+verification of the roads closed to traffic in that region.  It is
+intended merely as a guide to the actual locale of the
+fortifications, an exact plan of which I hope shortly to obtain."
+
+His lordship considered it very attentively, but without betraying
+the least discomposure.
+
+"For a man working upon such slight data as he himself confesses,"
+was the quiet comment, "he is damnably accurate.  It is as well, I
+think, that this did not reach Marshal Massena."
+
+"My own assumption is that he put off sending it, intending to
+replace it by the actual plan - which he here confesses to the
+expectation of obtaining shortly."
+
+"I think he died at the right moment.  Anything else?"
+
+"Indeed," said Colonel Grant, "I have kept the best for the last."
+And unfolding yet another document, he placed it in the hands of
+the Commander-in-Chief.  It was Lord Liverpool's note of the troops
+to be embarked for Lisbon in June and July - the note abstracted
+from the dispatch carried by Captain Garfield.
+
+His lordship's lips tightened as he considered it.  "His death was
+timely indeed, damned timely; and the man who killed him deserves
+to be mentioned in dispatches.  Nothing else, I suppose?"
+
+"The rest is of little consequence, sir."
+
+"Very well."  He rose.  "You will leave these with me, and the
+wallet as well, if you please.  I am on my way to confer with the
+members of the Council of Regency, and I am glad to go armed with
+so stout a weapon as this.  Whatever may be the ultimate finding of
+the court-martial, the present assumption must be that Samoval met
+the death of a spy caught in the act, as you suggested.  That is
+the only conclusion the Portuguese Government can draw when I lay
+these papers before it.  They will effectively silence all protests."
+
+"Shall I tell O'Moy?" inquired the colonel.
+
+"Oh, certainly," answered his lordship, instantly to change his
+mind.  "Stay!"  He considered, his chin in his hand, his eyes dreamy.
+"Better not, perhaps.  Better not tell anybody.  Let us keep this
+to ourselves for the present.  It has no direct bearing on the
+matter to be tried.  By the way, when does the court-martial sit?"
+
+"I have just heard that Marshal Beresford has ordered it to sit on
+Thursday here at Monsanto."
+
+His lordship considered.  "Perhaps I shall be present.  I may be at
+Torres Vedras until then.  It is a very odd affair.  What is your
+own impression of it, Grant?  Have you formed any?"
+
+Grant smiled darkly.  "I have been piecing things together.  The
+result is rather curious, and still very mystifying, still leaving a
+deal to be explained, and somehow this wallet doesn't fit into the
+scheme at all."
+
+"You shall tell me about it as we ride into Lisbon.  I want you
+to come with me.  Lady O'Moy must forgive me if I take French
+leave, since she is nowhere to be found."
+
+The truth was, that her ladyship had purposely gone into hiding,
+after the fashion of suffering animals that are denied expression
+of their pain.  She had gone off with her load of sorrow and
+anxiety into the thicket on the flank of Monsanto, and there Sylvia
+found her presently, dejectedly seated by a spring on a bank that
+was thick with flowering violets.  Her ladyship was in tears, her
+mind swollen to bursting-point by the secret which it sought to
+contain but felt itself certainly unable to contain much longer.
+
+"Why, Una dear," cried Miss Armytage, kneeling beside her and
+putting a motherly arm about that full-grown child, "what is this?"
+
+Her ladyship wept copiously, the springs of her grief gushing forth
+in response to that sympathetic touch.
+
+"Oh, my dear, I am so distressed.  I shall go mad, I think.  I am
+sure I have never deserved all this trouble.  I have always been
+considerate of others.  You know I wouldn't give pain to any one.
+And - and Dick has always been so thoughtless."
+
+"Dick?" said Miss Armytage, and there was less sympathy in
+her voice.  "It is Dick you are thinking about at present?"
+
+"Of course.  All this trouble has come through Dick.  I mean,"
+she recovered, "that all my troubles began with this affair of
+Dick's.  And now there is Ned under arrest and to be
+court-martialled."
+
+"But what has Captain Tremayne to do with Dick? "
+
+"Nothing, of course," her ladyship agreed, with more than usual
+self-restraint.  "But it's one trouble on another.  Oh, it's more
+than I can bear."
+
+"I know, my dear, I know," Miss Armytage said soothingly, and her
+own voice was not so steady.
+
+"You don't know!  How can you?  It isn't your brother or your
+friend.  It isn't as if you cared very much for either of them.
+If you did, if you loved Dick or Ned, you might realise what I am
+suffering."
+
+Miss Armytage's eyes looked straight ahead into the thick green
+foliage, and there was an odd smile, half wistful, half scornful,
+on her lips.
+
+"Yet I have done what I could," she said presently.  "I have
+spoken to Lord Wellington about them both."
+
+Lady O'Moy checked her tears to look at her companion, and there was
+dread in her eyes.
+
+"You have spoken to Lord Wellington?"
+
+"Yes.  The opportunity came, and I took it."
+
+"And whatever did you tell him?"  She was all a-tremble now, as she
+clutched Miss Armytage's hand.
+
+Miss Armytage related what had passed; how she had explained the
+true facts of Dick's case to his lordship; how she had protested
+her faith that Tremayne was incapable of lying, and that if he said
+he had not killed Samoval it was certain that he had not done so;
+and, finally, how his lordship had promised to bear both cases in his
+mind.
+
+"That doesn't seem very much," her ladyship complained.
+
+"But he said that he would never allow a British officer to be made
+a scapegoat, and that if things proved to be as I stated them he
+would see that the worst that happened to Dick would be his dismissal
+from the army.  He asked me to let him know immediately if Dick
+were found."
+
+More than ever was her ladyship on the very edge of confiding.
+A chance word might have broken down the last barrier of her will.
+But that word was not spoken, and so she was given the opportunity
+of first consulting her brother.
+
+He laughed when he heard the story.
+
+"A trap to take me, that's all," he pronounced it.  "My dear girl,
+that stiff-necked martinet knows nothing of forgiveness for a
+military offence.  Discipline is the god at whose shrine he worships."
+And he afforded her anecdotes to illustrate and confirm his assertion
+of Lord Wellington's ruthlessness.  "I tell you," he concluded, "it's
+nothing but a trap to catch me.  And if you had been fool enough to
+yield, and to have blabbed of my presence to Sylvia, you would have
+had it proved to you."
+
+She was terrified and of course convinced, for she was easy of
+conviction, believing always the last person to whom she spoke.  She
+sat down on one of the boxes that furnished that cheerless refuge
+of Mr. Butler's.
+
+"Then what's to become of Ned?" she cried.  "Oh, I had hoped that
+we had found a way out at last."
+
+He raised himself on his elbow on the camp-bed they had fitted
+up for him.
+
+"Be easy now," he bade her impatiently.  "They can't do anything to
+Ned until they find him guilty; and how are they going to find him
+guilty when he's innocent?"
+
+"Yes; but the appearances!"
+
+"Fiddlesticks!" he answered her - and the expression chosen was a
+mere concession to her sex, and not at all what Mr. Butler intended.
+"Appearances can't establish guilt.  Do be sensible, and remember
+that they will have to prove that he killed Samoval.  And you can't
+prove a thing to be what it isn't.  You can't!"
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"Certain sure," he replied with emphasis.
+
+"Do you know that I shall have to give evidence before the court?"
+she announced resentfully.
+
+It was an announcement that gave him pause.  Thoughtfully he stroked
+his abominable tuft of red beard.  Then he dismissed the matter with
+a shrug and a smile.
+
+"Well, and what of it?" he cried.  "They are not likely to bully
+you or cross-examine you.  Just tell them what you saw from the
+balcony.  Indeed you can't very well say anything else, or they
+will see that you are lying, and then heaven alone knows what may
+happen to you, as well as to me."
+
+She got up in a pet.  "You're callous, Dick - callous!" she told
+him.  "Oh, I wish you had never come to me for shelter."
+
+He looked at her and sneered.  "That's a matter you can soon mend,"
+he told her.  "Call up Terence and the others and have me shot.  I
+promise I shall make no resistance.  You see, I'm not able to resist
+even if I would."
+
+"Oh, how can you think it?"  She was indignant.
+
+"Well, what is a poor devil to think?  You blow hot and cold all in
+a breath.  I'm sick and ill and feverish," he continued with
+self-pity, "and now even you find me a trouble.  I wish to God
+they'd shoot me and make an end.  I'm sure it would be best for
+everybody."
+
+And now she was on her knees beside him, soothing him; protesting
+that he had misunderstood her; that she had meant - oh, she didn't
+know what she had meant, she was so distressed on his account.
+
+"And there's never the need to be," he assured her.  "Surely you
+can be guided by me if you want to help me.  As soon as ever my
+leg gets well again I'll be after fending for myself, and trouble
+you no further.  But if you want to shelter me until then, do it
+thoroughly, and don't give way to fear at every shadow without
+substance that falls across your path."
+
+She promised it, and on that promise left him; and, believing him,
+she bore herself more cheerfully for the remainder of the day.  But
+that evening after they had dined her fears and anxieties drove her
+at last to seek her natural and legal protector.
+
+Sir Terence had sauntered off towards the house, gloomy and silent
+as he had been throughout the meal.  She ran after him now, and came
+tripping lightly at his side up the steps.  She put her arm through
+his.
+
+"Terence dear, you are not going back to work again?" she pleaded.
+
+He stopped, and from his fine height looked down upon her with a
+curious smile.  Slowly he disengaged his arm from the clasp of her
+own.  "I am afraid I must," he answered coldly.  "I have a great
+deal to do, and I am short of a secretary.  When this inquiry is
+over I shall have more time to myself, perhaps."  There was something
+so repellent in his voice, in his manner of uttering those last words,
+that she stood rebuffed and watched him vanish into the building.
+
+Then she stamped her foot and her pretty mouth trembled.
+
+"Oaf!" she said aloud.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE EVIDENCE
+
+
+The board of officers convened by Marshal Beresford to form the
+court that was to try Captain Tremayne, was presided over by
+General Sir Harry Stapleton, who was in command of the British
+troops quartered in Lisbon.  It included, amongst others, the
+adjutant-general, Sir Terence O'Moy; Colonel Fletcher of the
+Engineers, who had come in haste from Torres Vedras, having first
+desired to be included in the board chiefly on account of his
+friendship for Tremayne; and Major Carruthers.  The judge-advocate's
+task of conducting the case against the prisoner was deputed to the
+quartermaster of Tremayne's own regiment, Major Swan.
+
+The court sat in a long, cheerless hall, once the refectory of the
+Franciscans, who had been the first tenants of Monsanto.  It was
+stone-flagged, the windows set at a height of some ten feet from the
+ground, the bare, whitewashed walls hung with very wooden portraits
+of long-departed kings and princes of Portugal who had been
+benefactors of the order.
+
+The court occupied the abbot's table, which was set on a shallow
+dais at the end of the room - a table of stone with a covering of
+oak, over which a green cloth had been spread; the officers - twelve
+in number, besides the president - sat with their backs to the wall,
+immediately under the inevitable picture of the Last Supper.
+
+The court being sworn, Captain Tremayne was brought in by the
+provost-marshal's guard and given a stool placed immediately before
+and a few paces from the table.  Perfectly calm and imperturbable,
+he saluted the court, and sat down, his guards remaining some paces
+behind him.
+
+He had declined all offers of a friend to represent him, on the
+grounds that the court could not possibly afford him a case to
+answer.
+
+The president, a florid, rather pompous man, who spoke with a
+faint lisp, cleared his throat and read the charge against the
+prisoner from the sheet with which he had been supplied - the
+charge of having violated the recent enactment against duelling made
+by the Commander-in-Chief of his Majesty's forces in the Peninsula,
+in so far as he had fought: a duel with Count Jeronymo de Samoval,
+and of murder in so far as that duel, conducted in an irregular
+manner, and without any witnesses, had resulted in the death of the
+said Count Jeronymo de Samoval.
+
+"How say you, then, Captain Tremayne?" the judge-advocate
+challenged him.  "Are you guilty of these charges or not guilty?"
+
+"Not guilty."
+
+The president sat back and observed the prisoner with an eye that
+was officially benign.  Tremayne's glance considered the court and
+met the concerned and grave regard of his colonel, of his friend
+Carruthers and of two other friends of his own regiment, the cold
+indifference of three officers of the Fourteenth - then stationed
+in Lisbon with whom he was unacquainted, and the utter inscrutability
+of O'Moy's rather lowering glance, which profoundly intrigued him,
+and, lastly, the official hostility of Major Swan, who was on his
+feet setting forth the case against him.  Of the remaining members
+of the court he took no heed.
+
+>From the opening address it did not seem to Captain Tremayne as if
+this case - which had been hurriedly prepared by Major Swan, chiefly
+that same morning would amount to very much.  Briefly the major
+announced his intention of establishing to the satisfaction of the
+court how, on the night of the 28th of May, the prisoner, in flagrant
+violation of an enactment in a general order of the 26th of that
+same month, had engaged in a duel with Count Jeronymo de Samoval, a
+peer of the realm of Portugal.
+
+Followed a short statement of the case from the point of view of the
+prosecution, an anticipation of the evidence to be called, upon
+which the major thought - rather sanguinely, opined Captain Tremayne
+- to convict the accused.  He concluded with an assurance that the
+evidence of the prisoner's guilt was as nearly direct as evidence
+could be in a case of murder.
+
+The first witness called was the butler, Mullins.  He was introduced
+by the sergeant-major stationed by the double doors at the end of
+the hall from the ante-room where the witnesses commanded to
+be present were in waiting.
+
+Mullins, rather less venerable than usual, as a consequence of
+agitation and affliction on behalf of Captain Tremayne, to whom he
+was attached, stated nervously the facts within his knowledge.  He
+was occupied with the silver in his pantry, having remained up in
+case Sir Terence, who was working late in his study, should require
+anything before going to bed.  Sir Terence called him, and -
+
+"At what time did Sir Terence call you?" asked the major.
+
+"It was ten minutes past twelve, sir, by the clock in my pantry."
+
+"You are sure that the clock was right?"
+
+
+"Quite sure, sir; I had put it right that same evening."
+
+"Very well, then.  Sir Terence called you at ten minutes past
+twelve.  Pray continue."
+
+"He gave me a letter addressed to the Commissary-general.  'Take
+that,' says he, 'to the sergeant of the guard at once, and tell him
+to be sure that it is forwarded to the Commissary-General first
+thing in the morning.'  I went out at once, and on the lawn in the
+quadrangle I saw a man lying on his back on the grass and another man
+kneeling beside him.  I ran across to them.  It was a bright,
+moonlight night - bright as day it was, and you could see quite clear.
+The gentleman that was kneeling looks up, at me, and I sees it was
+Captain Tremayne, sir.  'What's this, Captain dear?' says I.  'It's
+Count Samoval, and he's kilt,' says he, 'for God's sake, go and fetch
+somebody.'  So I ran back to tell Sir Terence, and Sir Terence he
+came out with me, and mighty startled he was at what he found there.
+'What's happened ?'says he, and the captain answers him just as he
+had answered me: 'It's Count Samoval, and he's kilt.  'But how did
+it happen?' says Sir Terence.  'Sure and that's just what I want to
+know,' says the captain; 'I found him here.'  And then Sir Terence
+turns to me, and 'Mullins,' says he, 'just fetch the guard,' and of
+course, I went at once."
+
+"Was there any one else present?" asked the prosecutor.
+
+"Not in the quadrangle, sir.  But Lady O'Moy was on the balcony of
+her room all the time."
+
+"Well, then, you fetched the guard.  What happened when you returned?"
+
+"Colonel Grant arrived, sir, and I understood him to say that he
+had been following Count Samoval ... "
+
+"Which way did Colonel Grant come?" put in the president.
+
+"By the gate from the terrace."
+
+"Was it open?"
+
+"No, sir.  Sir Terence himself went to open the wicket when Colonel
+Grant knocked."
+
+Sir Harry nodded and Major Swan resumed the examination.
+
+"What happened next?"
+
+"Sir Terence ordered the captain under arrest."
+
+"Did Captain Tremayne submit at once?"
+
+"Well, not quite at once, sir.  He naturally made some bother.
+'Good God!' he says, 'ye'll never be after thinking I kilt him?  I
+tell you I just found him here like this.' 'What were ye doing here,
+then?' says Sir Terence.  'I was coming to see you,' says the
+captain.  'What about?' says Sir Terence, and with that the captain
+got angry, said he refused to be cross-questioned and went off to
+report himself under arrest as he was bid."
+
+That closed the butler's evidence, and the judge-advocate looked
+across at the prisoner.
+
+"Have you any questions for the witness?" he inquired.
+
+"None," replied Captain Tremayne.  "He has given his evidence very
+faithfully and accurately."
+
+Major Swan invited the court to question the witness in any manner
+it considered desirable.  The only one to avail himself of the
+invitation was Carruthers, who, out of his friendship and concern
+for Tremayne - and a conviction of Tremayne's innocence begotten
+chiefly by that friendship desired to bring out anything that might
+tell in his favour.
+
+"What was Captain Tremayne's bearing when he spoke to you and to Sir
+Terence?"
+
+"Quite as usual, sir."
+
+"He was quite calm, not at all perturbed?"
+
+"Devil a bit; not until Sir Terence ordered him under arrest, and
+then he was a little hot."
+
+"Thank you, Mullins."
+
+Dismissed by the court, Mullins would have departed, but that upon
+being told by the sergeant-major that he was at liberty to remain
+if he chose he found a seat on one of the benches ranged against the
+wall.
+
+The next witness was Sir Terence, who gave his evidence quietly from
+his place at the board immediately on the president's right.  He was
+pale, but otherwise composed, and the first part of his evidence was
+no more than a confirmation of what Mullins had said, an exact and
+strictly truthful statement of the circumstances as he had witnessed
+them from the moment when Mullins had summoned him.
+
+"You were present, I believe, Sir Terence," said Major Swan, "at an
+altercation that arose on the previous day between Captain Tremayne
+and the deceased? "
+
+"Yes.  It happened at lunch here at Monsanto."
+
+"What was the nature of it?"
+
+"Count Samoval permitted himself to criticise adversely Lord
+Wellington's enactment against duelling, and Captain Tremayne
+defended it.  They became a little heated, and the fact was
+mentioned that Samoval himself was a famous swordsman.  Captain
+Tremayne made the remark that famous swordsmen were required by
+Count Samoval's country to, save it from invasion.  The remark was
+offensive to the deceased, and although the subject was abandoned
+out of regard for the ladies present, it was abandoned on a threat
+from Count Samoval to continue it later."
+
+"Was it so continued?"
+
+"Of that I have no knowledge."
+
+Invited to cross-examine the witness, Captain Tremayne again
+declined, admitting freely that all that Sir Terence had said was
+strictly true.  Then Carruthers, who appeared to be intent to act as
+the prisoner's friend, took up the examination of his chief.
+
+"It is of course admitted that Captain Tremayne enjoyed free access
+to Monsanto practically at all hours in his capacity as your military
+secretary, Sir Terence?"
+
+"Admitted," said Sir Terence.
+
+"And it is therefore possible that he might have come upon the body
+of the deceased just as Mullins came upon it?"
+
+"It is possible, certainly.  The evidence to come will no doubt
+determine whether it is a tenable opinion."
+
+"Admitting this, then, the attitude in which Captain Tremayne was
+discovered would be a perfectly natural one?  It would be natural
+that he should investigate the identity and hurt of the man he found
+there?"
+
+" Certainly."
+
+"But it would hardly be natural that he should linger by the body
+of a man he had himself slain, thereby incurring the risk of being
+discovered?"
+
+"That is a question for the court rather than for me."
+
+"Thank you, Sir Terence."  And, as no one else desired to question
+him, Sir Terence resumed his seat, and Lady O'Moy was called.
+
+She came in very white and trembling, accompanied by Miss Armytage,
+whose admittance was suffered by the court, since she would not be
+called upon to give evidence.  One of the officers of the Fourteenth
+seated on the extreme right of the table made gallant haste to set a
+chair for her ladyship, which she accepted gratefully.
+
+The oath administered, she was invited gently by Major Swan to tell
+the court what she knew of the case before them.
+
+"But - but I know nothing," she faltered in evident distress, and
+Sir Terence, his elbow leaning on the table, covered his mouth with
+his hand that its movements might not betray him.  His eyes glowered
+upon her with a ferocity that was hardly dissembled.
+
+"If you will take the trouble to tell the court what you saw from
+your balcony," the major insisted, "the court will be grateful."
+
+Perceiving her agitation, and attributing it to nervousness, moved
+also by that delicate loveliness of hers, and by deference to the
+adjutant-generates lady, Sir Harry Stapleton intervened.
+
+"Is Lady O'Moy's evidence really necessary?" he asked.  "Does it
+contribute any fresh fact regarding the discovery of the body?"
+
+"No, sir," Major Swan admitted.  "It is merely a corroboration
+of what we have already heard from Mullins and Sir Terence."
+
+"Then why unnecessarily distress this lady?"
+
+"Oh, for my own part, sir - " the prosecutor was submitting, when
+Sir Terence cut in:
+
+"I think that in the prisoner's interest perhaps Lady O'Moy will
+not mind being distressed a little."  It was at her he looked, and
+for her and Tremayne alone that he intended the cutting lash of
+sarcasm concealed from the rest of the court by his smooth accent.
+"Mullins has said, I think, that her ladyship was on the balcony
+when he came into the quadrangle.  Her evidence therefore, takes us
+further back in point of time than does Mullins's."  Again the
+sarcastic double meaning was only for those two.  "Considering that
+the prisoner is being tried for his life, I do not think we should
+miss anything that may, however slightly, affect our judgment."
+
+"Sir Terence is right, I think, sir," the judge-advocate supported.
+
+"Very well, then," said the president.  "Proceed, if you please."
+
+"Will you be good enough to tell the court, Lady O'Moy, how you
+came to be upon the balcony?"
+
+Her pallor had deepened, and her eyes looked more than ordinarily
+large and child-like as they turned this way and that to survey the
+members of the court.  Nervously she dabbed her lips with a
+handkerchief before answering mechanically as she had been schooled:
+
+"I heard a cry, and I ran out - "
+
+"You were in bed at the time, of course?" quoth her husband,
+interrupting.
+
+"What on earth has that to do with it, Sir Terence?" the president
+rebuked him, out of his earnest desire to cut this examination as
+short as possible.
+
+"The question, sir, does not seem to me to be without point,"
+replied O'Moy.  He was judicially smooth and self-contained.  "It is
+intended to enable us to form an opinion as to the lapse of time
+between her ladyship's hearing the cry and reaching the balcony."
+
+Grudgingly the president admitted the point, and the question was
+repeated.
+
+"Ye-es," came Lady O'Moy's tremulous, faltering answer, "I was in
+bed."
+
+"But not asleep - or were you asleep?" rapped O'Moy again, and in
+answer to the president's impatient glance again explained himself:
+"We should know whether perhaps the cry might not have been repeated
+several times before her ladyship heard it.  That is of value."
+
+"It would be more regular," ventured the judge-advocate, "if Sir
+Terence would reserve his examination of the witness until she has
+given her evidence."
+
+"Very well," grumbled Sir Terence, and he sat back, foiled for the
+moment in his deliberate intent to torture her into admissions that
+must betray her if made.
+
+"I was not asleep," she told the court, thus answering her husband's
+last question.  "I heard the cry, and ran to the balcony at once.
+That - that is all."
+
+"But what did you see from the balcony?" asked Major Swan.
+
+"It was night, and of course - it - it was dark," she answered.
+
+"Surely not dark, Lady O'Moy?  There was a moon, I think - a
+full moon?"
+
+"Yes; but - but - there was a good deal of shadow in the garden,
+and - and I couldn't see anything at first."
+
+"But you did eventually?"
+
+"Oh, eventually!  Yes, eventually."  Her fingers were twisting and
+untwisting the handkerchief they held, and her distressed loveliness
+was very piteous to see.  Yet it seems to have occurred to none of
+them that this distress and the minor contradictions into which
+it led her were the result of her intent to conceal the truth, of
+her terror lest it should nevertheless be wrung from her.  Only
+O'Moy, watching her and reading in her every word and glance and
+gesture the signs of her falsehood, knew the hideous thing she
+strove to hide, even, it seemed, at the cost of her lover's life.
+To his lacerated soul her torture vas a balm.  Gloating, he watched
+her, then, and watched her lover, marvelling at the blackguard's
+complete self-mastery and impassivity even now.
+
+Major Swan was urging her gently.
+
+"Eventually, then, what was it that you saw?"
+
+"I saw a man lying on the ground, and another kneeling over him,
+and then - almost at once - Mullins came out, and - "
+
+"I don't think we need take this any further, Major Swan," the
+president again interposed.  "We have heard what happened after
+Mullins came out."
+
+"Unless the prisoner wishes - " began the judge-advocate.
+
+"By no means," said Tremayne composedly.  Although outwardly
+impassive, he had been watching her intently, and it was his eyes
+that had perturbed her more than anything in that court.  It was
+she who must determine for him how to proceed; how far to defend
+himself.  He had hoped that by now Dick Butler might have been got
+away, so that it would have been safe to tell the whole truth,
+although he began to doubt how far that could avail him, how far,
+indeed, it would be believed in the absence of Dick Butler.  Her
+evidence told him that such hopes as he may have entertained had
+been idle, and that he must depend for his life simply upon the
+court's inability to bring the guilt home to him.  In this he had
+some confidence, for, knowing himself innocent, it seemed to him
+incredible that he could be proven guilty.  Failing that, nothing
+short of the discovery of the real slayer of Samoval could save him
+ - and that was a matter wrapped in the profoundest mystery.  The
+only man who could conceivably have fought Samoval in such a place
+was Sir Terence himself.  But then it was utterly inconceivable that
+in that case Sir Terence, who was the very soul of honour, should
+not only keep silent and allow another man to suffer, but actually
+sit there in judgment upon that other; and, besides, there was no
+quarrel, nor ever had been, between Sir Terence and Samoval.
+
+"There is," Major Swan was saying, "just one other matter upon
+which I should like to question Lady O'Moy."  And thereupon he
+proceeded to do so: "Your ladyship will remember that on the day
+before the event in which Count Samoval met his death he was one
+of a small luncheon party at your house here in Monsanto."
+
+"Yes," she replied, wondering fearfully what might be coming now.
+
+"Would your ladyship be good enough to tell the court who were the
+other members of that party?"
+
+"It - it was hardly a party, sir," she answered, with her
+unconquerable insistence upon trifles.  "We were just Sir Terence
+and myself, Miss Armytage, Count Samoval, Colonel Grant, Major
+Carruthers and Captain Tremayne."
+
+"Can your ladyship recall any words that passed between the
+deceased and Captain Tremayne on that occasion - words of
+disagreement, I mean?"
+
+She knew that there had been something, but in her benumbed state
+of mind she was incapable of remembering what it was.  All that
+remained in her memory was Sylvia's warning after she and her
+cousin had left the table, Sylvia's insistence that she should call
+Captain Tremayne away to avoid trouble between himself and the
+Count.  But, search as she would, the actual subject of disagreement
+eluded her.  Moreover, it occurred to her suddenly, and sowed fresh
+terror in her soul, that, whatever it was, it would tell against
+Captain Tremayne.
+
+"I - I am afraid I don't remember," she faltered at last.
+
+"Try to think, Lady O'Moy."
+
+" I - I have tried.  But I - I can't."  Her voice had fallen almost
+to a whisper.
+
+"Need we insist?" put in the president compassionately.  "There are
+sufficient witnesses as to what passed on that occasion without
+further harassing her ladyship."
+
+"Quite so, sir," the major agreed in his dry voice.  "It only
+remains for the prisoner to question the witness if he so wishes."
+
+Tremayne shook his head.  "It is quite unnecessary, sir," he assured
+the president, and never saw the swift, grim smile that flashed
+across Sir Terence's stern face.
+
+Of the court Sir Terence was the only member who could have desired
+to prolong the painful examination of her ladyship.  But he perceived
+from the president's attitude that he could not do so without
+betraying the vindictiveness actuating him; and so he remained silent
+for the present.  He would have gone so far as to suggest that her
+ladyship should be invited to remain in court against the possibility
+of further evidence being presently required from her but that he
+perceived there was no necessity to do so.  Her deadly anxiety
+concerning the prisoner must in itself be sufficient to determine her
+to remain, as indeed it proved.  Accompanied and half supported by
+Miss Armytage, who was almost as pale as herself, but otherwise very
+steady in her bearing, Lady O'Moy made her way, with faltering steps
+to the benches ranged against the side wall, and sat there to hear
+the remainder of the proceedings.
+
+After the uninteresting and perfunctory evidence of the sergeant of
+the guard who had been present when the prisoner was ordered under
+arrest, the next witness called was Colonel Grant.  His testimony
+was strictly in accordance with the facts which we know him to have
+witnessed, but when he was in the middle of his statement an
+interruption occurred.
+
+At the extreme right of the dais on which the table stood there
+was a small oaken door set in the wall and giving access to a small
+ante-room that was known, rightly or wrongly, as the abbot's chamber.
+That anteroom communicated directly with what was now the guardroom,
+which accounts for the new-comer being ushered in that way by the
+corporal at the time.
+
+At the opening of that door the members of the court looked round
+in sharp annoyance, suspecting here some impertinent intrusion.
+The next moment, however, this was changed to respectful surprise.
+There was a scraping of chairs and they were all on their feet in
+token of respect for the slight man in the grey undress frock who
+entered.  It was Lord Wellington.
+
+Saluting the members of the court with two fingers to his cocked
+hat, he immediately desired them to sit, peremptorily waving his
+hand, and requesting the president not to allow his entrance to
+interrupt or interfere with the course of the inquiry.
+
+"A chair here for me, if you please, sergeant," he called and, when
+it was fetched, took his seat at the end of the table, with his back
+to the door through which he had come and immediately facing the
+prosecutor.  He retained his hat, but placed his riding-crop on the
+table before him; and the only thing he would accept was an officer's
+notes of the proceedings as far as they had gone, which that officer
+himself was prompt to offer.  With a repeated injunction to the
+court to proceed, Lord Wellington became instantly absorbed in the
+study of these notes.
+
+Colonel Grant, standing very straight and stiff in the originally
+red coat which exposure to many weathers had faded to an autumnal
+brown, continued and concluded his statement of what he had seen
+and heard on the night of the 28th of May in the garden at Monsanto.
+
+The judge-advocate now invited him to turn his memory back to the
+luncheon-party at Sir Terence's on the 27th, and to tell the court
+of the altercation that had passed on that occasion between Captain
+Tremayne and Count Samoval.
+
+"The conversation at table," he replied, "turned, as was perhaps
+quite natural, upon the recently published general order prohibiting
+duelling and making it a capital offence for officers in his
+Majesty's service in the Peninsula.  Count Samoval stigmatised the
+order as a degrading and arbitrary one, and spoke in defence of
+single combat as the only honourable method of settling differences
+between gentlemen.  Captain Tremayne dissented rather sharply, and
+appeared to resent the term 'degrading' applied by the Count to the
+enactment.  Words followed, and then some one - Lady O'Moy, I think,
+and as I imagine with intent to soothe the feelings of Count Samoval,
+which appeared to be ruffled - appealed to his vanity by mentioning
+the fact that he was himself a famous swordsman.  To this Captain
+Tremayne's observation was a rather unfortunate one, although I must
+confess that I was fully in sympathy with it at the time.  He said,
+as nearly as I remember, that at the moment Portugal was in urgent
+need of famous swords to defend her from invasion and not to
+increase the disorders at home."
+
+Lord Wellington looked up from the notes and thoughtfully stroked
+his high-bridged nose.  His stern, handsome face was coldly
+impassive, his fine eyes resting upon the prisoner, but his attention
+all to what Colonel Grant was saying.
+
+"It was a remark of which Samoval betrayed the bitterest resentment.
+He demanded of Captain Tremayne that he should be more precise, and
+Tremayne replied that, whilst he had spoken generally, Samoval was
+welcome to the cap if he found it fitted him.  To that he added a
+suggestion that, as the conversation appeared to be tiresome to the
+ladies, it would be better to change its topic.  Count Samoval
+consented, but with the promise, rather threateningly delivered,
+that it should be continued at another time.  That, sir, is all,
+I think."
+
+"Have you any questions for the witness, Captain Tremayne?" inquired
+the judge-advocate.
+
+As before, Captain Tremayne's answer was in the negative, coupled
+with the now usual admission that Colonel Grant's statement accorded
+perfectly with iris own recollection of the facts.
+
+The court, however, desired enlightenment on several subjects.  Came
+first of all Carruthers's inquiries as to the bearing of the prisoner
+when ordered under arrest, eliciting from Colonel Grant a variant of
+the usual reply.
+
+"It was not inconsistent with innocence," he said.
+
+It was an answer which appeared to startle the court, and perhaps
+Carruthers would have acted best in Tremayne's interest had he left
+the question there.  But having obtained so much he eagerly sought
+for more.
+
+"Would you say that it was inconsistent with guilt?" he cried.
+
+Colonel Grant smiled slowly, and slowly shook his head.  "I fear I
+could not go so far, as that," he answered, thereby plunging poor
+Carruthers into despair.
+
+And now Colonel Fletcher voiced a question agitating the minds of
+several members of the count.
+
+"Colonel Grant," he said, "you have told us that on the night in
+question you had Count Samoval under observation, and that upon word
+being brought to you of his movements by one of your agents you
+yourself followed him to Monsanto.  Would you be good enough to tell
+the court why you were watching the deceased's movements at the time?"
+
+Colonel Grant glanced at Lord Wellington.  He smiled a little
+reflectively and shook his head.
+
+"I am afraid that the public interest will not allow me to answer
+your question.  Since, however, Lord Wellington himself is present,
+I would suggest that you ask his lordship whether I am to give you
+the information you require."
+
+"Certainly not," said his lordship crisply, without awaiting further
+question.  "Indeed, one of my reasons for being present is to ensure
+that nothing on that score shall transpire."
+
+There followed a moment's silence.  Then the president ventured a
+question.  "May we ask, sir, at least whether Colonel Grant's
+observation of Count Samoval resulted from any knowledge of, or
+expectation of, this duel that was impending?"
+
+"Certainly you may ask that," Lord Wellington., consented.
+
+"It did not, sir," said Colonel Grant in answer to the question.
+
+"What grounds had you, Colonel Grant, for assuming that Count Samoval
+was going to Monsanto?" the president asked.
+
+"Chiefly the direction taken."
+
+"And nothing else?"
+
+"I think we are upon forbidden ground again," said Colonel Grant,
+and again he looked at Lord Wellington for direction.
+
+"I do not see the point of the question," said Lord Wellington,
+replying to that glance.  "Colonel Grant has quite plainly informed
+the court that his observation of Count Samoval had no slightest
+connection with this duel, nor was inspired by any knowledge or
+suspicion on his part that any such duel was to be fought.  With
+that I think the court should be content.  It has been necessary
+for Colonel Grant to explain to the court his own presence at
+Monsanto at midnight on the 28th.  It would have been better,
+perhaps, had he simply stated that it was fortuitous, although I
+can understand that the court might have hesitated to accept such
+a statement.  That, however, is really all that concerns the matter.
+Colonel Grant happened to be there.  That is all that the court
+need remember.  Let me add the assurance that it would not in the
+least assist the court to know more, so far as the case under
+consideration is concerned."
+
+In view of that the president notified that he had nothing further
+to ask the witness, and Colonel Grant saluted and withdrew to a
+seat near Lady O'Moy.
+
+There followed the evidence of Major Carruthers with regard to the
+dispute between Count Samoval and Captain Tremayne, which
+substantially bore out what Sir Terence and Colonel Grant had
+already said, notwithstanding that it manifested a strong bias in
+favour of the prisoner.
+
+"The conversation which Samoval threatened to resume does not appear
+to have been resumed," he added in conclusion.
+
+"How can you say that?" Major Swan asked him.
+
+"I may state my opinion, sir," flashed Carruthers, his chubby face
+reddening.
+
+"Indeed, sir, you may not," the president assured him.  "You are
+upon oath to give evidence of facts directly within your own
+personal knowledge."
+
+"It is directly within my own personal knowledge that Captain
+Tremayne was called away from the table by Lady O'Moy, and that he
+did not have another opportunity of speaking with Count Samoval that
+day.  I saw the Count leave shortly after, and at the time Captain
+Tremayne was still with her ladyship - as her ladyship can testify
+if necessary.  He spent the remainder of the afternoon with me at
+work, and we went home together in the evening.  We share the same
+lodging in Alcantara."
+
+"There was still all of the next day," said Sir Harry.  "Do you
+say that the prisoner was never out of your sight on that day too?"
+
+"I do not; but I can't believe - "
+
+"I am afraid you are going to state opinions again," Major Swan
+interposed.
+
+"Yet it is evidence of a kind," insisted Carruthers, with the
+tenacity of a bull-dog.  He looked as if he would make it a personal
+matter between himself and Major Swan if he were not allowed to
+proceed.  "I can't believe that Captain Tremayne would have embroiled
+himself further with Count Samoval.  Captain Tremayne has too high a
+regard for discipline and for orders, and he is the least excitable
+man I have ever known.  Nor do I believe that he would have consented
+to meet Samoval without my knowledge."
+
+"Not perhaps unless Captain Tremayne desired to keep the matter
+secret, in view of the general order, which is precisely what it is
+contended that he did."
+
+"Falsely contended, then," snapped Major Carruthers, to be instantly
+rebuked by the president.
+
+He sat down in a huff, and the judge-advocate called Private Bates,
+who had been on sentry duty on the night of the 28th, to corroborate
+the evidence of the sergeant of the guard as to the hour at which
+the prisoner had driven up to Monsanto in his curricle.
+
+Private Bates having been heard, Major Swan announced that he did
+not propose to call any further witnesses, and resumed his seat.
+Thereupon, to the president's invitation, Captain Tremayne replied
+that he had no witnesses to call at all.
+
+"In that case, Major Swan," said Sir Harry, "the court will be glad
+to hear you further."
+
+And Major Swan came to his feet again to address the court for the
+prosecution.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+BITTER WATER
+
+
+Major Swan may or may not have been a gifted soldier.  History is
+silent on the point.  But the surviving records of the court-martial
+with which we are concerned go to show that he was certainly not a
+gifted speaker.  His vocabulary was limited, his rhetoric clumsy,
+and Major Carruthers denounces his delivery as halting, his very
+voice dull and monotonous; also his manner, reflecting his mind on
+this occasion, appears to have been perfectly unimpassioned.  He had
+been saddled with a duty and he must perform it.  He would do so
+conscientiously to the best of his ability, for he seems to have
+been a conscientious man; but he could not be expected to put his
+heart into the matter, since he was not inflamed by any zeal born
+of conviction, nor had he any of the incentives of a civil advocate
+to sway his audience by all possible means.
+
+Nevertheless the facts themselves, properly marshalled, made up a
+dangerous case against the prisoner.  Major Swan began by dwelling
+upon the evidence of motive: there had been a quarrel, or the
+beginnings of a quarrel, between the deceased and the accused; the
+deceased had shown himself affronted, and had been heard quite
+unequivocally to say that the matter could not be left at the stage
+at which it was interrupted at Sir Terence's luncheon-table.  Major
+Swan dwelt for a moment upon the grounds of the quarrel.  They were
+by no means discreditable to the accused, but it was singularly
+unfortunate, ironical almost, that he should have involved himself
+in a duel as a result of his out-spoken defence of a wise measure
+which made duelling in the British army a capital offence.  With
+that, however, he did not think that the court was immediately
+concerned.  By the duel itself the accused had offended against the
+recent enactment, and, moreover, the irregular manner in which the
+encounter had been conducted, without seconds or witnesses, rendered
+the accused answerable to a charge of murder, if it could be proved
+that he actually did engage and kill the deceased.  Major Swan
+thought this could be proved.
+
+The irregularity of the meeting must be assigned to the enactment
+against which it offended.  A matter which, under other
+circumstances, considering the good character borne by Captain
+Tremayne, would have been quite incomprehensible, was, he thought,
+under existing circumstances, perfectly clear.  Because Captain
+Tremayne could not have found any friend to act for him, he was
+forced to forgo witnesses to the encounter, and because of the
+consequences to himself of the encounter's becoming known, he was
+forced to contrive that it should be held in secret.  They knew,
+from the evidence of Colonel Grant and Major Carruthers, that the
+meeting was desired by Count Samoval, and they were therefore
+entitled to assume that, recognising the conditions arising out of
+the recent enactment, the deceased had consented that the meeting
+should take place in this irregular fashion, since otherwise it
+could not have been held at all, and he would have been compelled
+to forgo the satisfaction he desired.
+
+He passed to the consideration of the locality chosen, and there
+he confessed that he was confronted with a mystery.  Yet the
+mystery would have been no less in the case of any other opponent
+than Captain Tremayne, since it was clear beyond all doubt that a
+duel had been fought and Count Samoval killed, and no less clear
+that it was a premeditated combat, and that the deceased had gone
+to Monsanto expressly to engage in it, since the duelling swords
+found had been identified as his property and must have been
+carried by him to the encounter.
+
+The mystery, he repeated, would have been no less in the case of
+any other opponent than Captain Tremayne; indeed, in the case of
+some other opponent it might even have been deeper.  It must be
+remembered, after all, that the place was one to which the accused
+had free access at all hours.
+
+And it was clearly proven that he availed himself of that access
+on the night in question.  Evidence had been placed before the court
+showing that he had come to Monsanto in a curricle at twenty minutes
+to twelve at the latest, and there was abundant evidence to show that
+he was found kneeling beside the body of the dead man at ten minutes
+past twelve - the body being quite warm at the time and the breath
+hardly out of it, proving that he had fallen but an instant before
+the arrival of Mullins and the other witnesses who had testified.
+
+Unless Captain Tremayne could account to the satisfaction of the
+court for the manner in which he had spent that half-hour, Major
+Swan did not perceive, when all the facts of motive and circumstance
+were considered, what conclusion the court could reach other than
+that Captain Tremayne was guilty of the death of Count Jeronymo de
+Samoval in a single combat fought under clandestine and irregular
+conditions, transforming the deed into technical murder.
+
+Upon that conclusion the major sat down to mop a brow that was
+perspiring freely.  From Lady O'MOY in the background came faintly,
+the sound of a half-suppressed moan.  Terrified, she clutched the
+hand of Miss Armytage, - and found that hand to lie like a thing of
+ice in her own, yet she suspected nothing of the deep agitation
+under her companion's, outward appearance of calm.
+
+Captain Tremayne rose slowly to address the court in reply to the
+prosecution.  As he faced his, judges now he met the smouldering
+eyes of Sir Terence considering him with such malevolence that he was
+shocked and bewildered.  Was he prejudged already, and by his best
+friend?  If so, what must be the attitude of the others?  But the
+kindly, florid countenance of the president was friendly and
+encouraging; there was eager anxiety for him in the gaze of his
+friend Caruthers.  He glanced at Lord Wellington sitting at the
+table's end sternly inscrutable, a mere spectator, yet one whose
+habit of command gave him an air that was authoritative and judicial.
+
+At length he began to speak.  He had considered his defence, and he
+had based it mainly upon a falsehood - since the strict truth must
+have proved ruinous to Richard Butler.
+
+"My answer, gentlemen" he said, "will be a very brief one as brief,
+indeed, as the prosecution merits - for I entertain the hope than
+no member of this court is satisfied that the case made out against
+me is by any means complete."  He spoke easily, fluently, and calmly:
+a man supremely self-controlled.  "It amounts, indeed, to throwing
+upon me the onus of proving myself innocent, and that is a burden
+which no British laws, civil or miliary, would ever commit the
+injustice of imposing upon an accused.
+
+"That certain words of disagreement passed between Count Samoval and
+myself on the eve of the affair in which the Count met his death, as
+you have heard from various witnesses, I at once and freely admitted.
+Thereby I saved the court time and trouble, and some other witnesses
+who might have been caused the distress of having to testify against
+me.  But that the dispute ever had any sequel, that the further
+subsequent discussion threatened at the time by Count Samoval ever
+took place, I most solemnly deny.  From the moment that I left Sir
+Terence's luncheon-table on the Saturday I never set eyes on Count
+Samoval again until I discovered him dead or dying in the garden here
+at Monsanto on Sunday night.  I can call no witnesses to support me
+in this, because it is not a matter susceptible to proof by evidence.
+Nor have I troubled to call the only witnesses I might have called
+ - witnesses as to my character and my regard for discipline -
+who might have testified that any such encounter as that of which I
+am accused would be utterly foreign to my nature.  There are officers
+in plenty in his Majesty's service who could bear witness that
+the practice of duelling is one that I hold in the utmost abhorrence,
+since I have frequently avowed it, and since in all my life I have
+never fought a single duel.  My service in his Majesty's army has
+happily afforded me the means of dispensing with any such proof of
+courage as the duel is supposed to give.  I say I might have called
+witnesses to that fact and I have not done so.  This is because,
+fortunately, there are several among the members of this court to
+whom I have been known for many years, and who can themselves, when
+this court comes to consider its finding, support my present assertion.
+
+"Let me ask you, then, gentlemen, whether it is conceivable that,
+entertaining such feelings as these towards single combat, I should
+have been led to depart from them under circumstances that might
+very well have afforded me an ample shield for refusing satisfaction
+to a too eager and pressing adversary?  It was precisely because I
+hold the duel in such contempt that I spoke with such asperity to
+the deceased when he pronounced Lord Wellington's enactment a
+degrading one to men of birth.  The very sentiments which I then
+expressed proclaimed my antipathy to the practice.  How, then,
+should I have committed the inconsistency of accepting a challenge
+upon such grounds from Count Samoval?  There is even more irony than
+Major Swan supposes in a situation which himself has called ironical.
+
+"So much, then, for the motives that are alleged to have actuated me.
+I hope you will conclude that I have answered the prosecution upon
+that matter.
+
+"Coming to the question of fact, I cannot find that there is
+anything to answer, for nothing has been proved against me.  True,
+it has been proved that I arrived at Monsanto at half-past eleven
+or twenty minutes to twelve on the night of the 28th, and it has
+been further proved that half-an-hour later I was discovered
+kneeling beside the dead body of Count Samoval.  But to say that
+this proves that I killed him is more, I think, if I understood him
+correctly, than Major Swan himself dares to assert.
+
+"Major Swan is quite satisfied that Samoval came to Monsanto for
+the purpose of fighting a duel that had been prearranged; and I
+admit that the two swords found, which have been proven the property
+of Count Samoval, and which, therefore, he must have brought with
+him, are a prima-facie proof of such a contention.  But if we assume,
+gentlemen, that I had accepted a challenge from the Count, let me
+ask you, can you think of any place less likely to have been
+appointed or agreed to by me for the encounter than the garden of
+the adjutant-general's quarters?  Secrecy is urged as the reason for
+the irregularity of the meeting.  What secrecy was ensured in such
+a place, where interruption and discovery might come at any moment,
+although the duel was held at midnight?  And what secrecy did I
+observe in my movements, considering that I drove openly to Monsanto
+in a curricle, which I left standing at the gates in full view of
+the guard, to await my return?  Should I have acted thus if I had
+been upon such an errand as is alleged?  Common sense, I think,
+should straightway acquit me on the grounds of the locality alone,
+and I cannot think that it should even be necessary for me, so as
+to complete my answer to an accusation entirely without support in
+fact or in logic, to account for my presence at Monsanto and my
+movements during the half-hour in question."
+
+He paused.  So far his clear reasoning had held and impressed the
+court.  This he saw plainly written on the faces of all - with one
+single exception.  Sir Terence alone the one man from whom he might
+have looked for the greatest relief - watched him ever malevolently,
+sardonically, with curling lip.  It gave him pause now that he stood
+upon the threshold of falsehood; and because of that inexplicable but
+obvious hostility, that attitude of expectancy to ensnare and destroy
+him, Captain Tremayne hesitated to step from the solid ground of
+reason, upon which he had confidently walked thus far, on to the
+uncertain bogland of mendacity.
+
+"I cannot think," he said, "that the court should consider it
+necessary for me to advance an alibi, to make a statement in proof
+of my innocence where I contend that no proof has been offered of
+my guilt."
+
+"I think it will be better, sir, in your own interests, so that you
+may be the more completely cleared," the president replied, and so
+compelled him to continue.
+
+"There was," he resumed, then, "a certain matter connected with the
+Commissary-General's department which was of the greatest urgency,
+yet which, under stress of work, had been postponed until the
+morrow.  It was concerned with some tents for General Picton's
+division at Celorico.  It occurred to me that night that it would
+be better dealt with at once, so that the documents relating to it
+could go forward early on Monday morning to the Commissary-General.
+Accordingly, I returned to Monsanto, entered the official quarters,
+and was engaged upon that task when a cry from the garden reached my
+ears.  That cry in the dead of night was sufficiently alarming, and
+I ran out at once to see what might have occasioned it.  I found
+Count Samoval either just dead or just dying, and I had scarcely made
+the discovery when Mullins, the butler, came out of the residential
+wing, as he has testified.
+
+"That, sirs, is all that I know of the death of Count Samoval, and
+I will conclude with my solemn affirmation, on my honour as a
+soldier, that I am as innocent of having procured it as I am ignorant
+of how it came about.
+
+"I leave myself with confidence in your hands, gentlemen," he ended,
+and resumed his seat.
+
+That he had favourably impressed the court was clear.  Miss Armytage
+whispered it to Lady O'Moy, exultation quivering in her whisper.
+
+"He is safe!"  And she added: "He was magnificent."
+
+Lady O'Moy pressed her hand in return.  "Thank God!  Oh, thank God!"
+she murmured under her breath.
+
+"I do," said Miss Armytage.
+
+There was silence, broken only by the rustle of the president's
+notes as he briefly looked them over as a preliminary to addressing
+the court.  And then suddenly, grating harshly upon that silence,
+came the voice of O'Moy.
+
+"Might I suggest, Sir Harry, that before we hear you three of the
+witnesses be recalled?  They are Sergeant Flynn, Private Bates and
+Mullins."
+
+The president looked round in surprise, and Carruthers took
+advantage of the pause to interpose an objection.
+
+"Is such a course regular, Sir Harry?"  He too had become conscious
+at last of Sir Terence's relentless hostility to the accused.  "The
+court has been given an opportunity of examining those witnesses,
+the accused has declined to call any on his own behalf, and the
+prosecution has already closed its case."
+
+Sir Harry considered a moment.  He had never been very clear upon
+matters of procedure, which he looked upon as none of a soldier's
+real business.  Instinctively in this difficulty he looked at Lord
+Wellington as if for guidance; but his lordship's face told him
+absolutely nothing, the Commander-in-Chief remaining an impassive
+spectator.  Then, whilst the president coughed and pondered, Major
+Swan came to the rescue.
+
+"The court," said the judge-advocate, "is entitled at any time
+before the finding to call or recall any witnesses, provided that
+the prisoner is afforded an opportunity of answering anything further
+that may be elicited in re-examination of these witnesses."
+
+"That is the rule," said Sir Terence, "and rightly so, for, as in
+the present instance, the prisoner's own statement may make it
+necessary."
+
+The president gave way, thereby renewing Miss Armytage's terrors
+and shaking at last even the prisoner's calm.
+
+Sergeant Flynn was the first of the witnesses recalled at Sir
+Terence's request, and it was Sir Terence who took up his
+re-examination.
+
+"You said, I think, that you were standing in the guardroom doorway
+when Captain Tremayne passed you at twenty minutes to twelve on the
+night of the 28th?"
+
+"Yes, sir.  I had turned out upon hearing the curricle draw up.  I
+had come to see who it was."
+
+"Naturally.  Well, now, did you observe which way Captain Tremayne
+went? - whether he went along the passage leading to the garden or
+up the stairs to the offices?"
+
+The sergeant considered for a moment, an Captain Tremayne became
+conscious for the first time that morning that his pulses were
+throbbing.  At last his dreadful suspense came to an end.
+
+"No, sir.  Captain Tremayne turned the corner, and was out of
+my sight, seeing that I didn't go beyond the guardroom doorway."
+
+Sir Terence's lips parted with a snap of impatience.  "But you
+must have heard," he insisted.  "You must have heard his steps -
+whether they went upstairs or straight on."
+
+"I am afraid I didn't take notice, sir."
+
+"But even without taking notice it seems impossible that you should
+not have heard the direction of his steps.  Steps going up stairs
+sound quite differently from steps walking along the level.  Try
+to think."
+
+The sergeant considered again.  But the president interposed.  The
+testiness which Sir Terence had been at no pains to conceal annoyed
+Sir Harry, and this insistence offended his sense of fair play.
+
+"The witness has already said that the didn't take notice.  I am
+afraid it can serve no good purpose to compel him to strain his
+memory.  The court could hardly rely upon his answer after what he
+has said already."
+
+"Very well," said Sir Terence curtly.  "We will pass on.  After
+the body of Count Samoval had been removed from the courtyard, did
+Mullins, my butler, come to you?"
+
+"Yes, Sir Terence."
+
+"What was his message?  Please tell the court."
+
+"He brought me a letter with instructions that it was to be
+forwarded first thing in the morning to the Commissary-General's
+office."
+
+"Did he make any statement beyond that when he delivered that
+letter?"
+
+The sergeant pondered a moment.  "Only that he had been bringing
+it when he found Count Samoval's body."
+
+"That is all I wish to ask, Sir Harry," O'Moy intimated, and
+looked round at his fellow-members of that court as if to inquire
+whether they had drawn any inference from the sergeant's statements.
+
+"Have you any questions to ask the witness, Captain Tremayne?" the
+president inquired.
+
+"None, sir," replied the prisoner.
+
+Came Private Bates next, and Sir Terence proceeded to question him..
+
+"You said in your evidence that Captain Tremayne arrived at Monsanto
+between half-past eleven and twenty minutes to twelve?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You told us, I think, that you determined this by the fact that you
+came on duty at eleven o'clock, and that it would be half-an-hour
+or a little more after that when Captain Tremayne arrived?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"That is quite in agreement with the evidence of your sergeant.
+Now tell the court where you were during the half-hour that
+followed - until you heard the guard being turned out by the
+sergeant."
+
+"Pacing in front of quarters, sir."
+
+"Did you notice the windows of the building at all during that time?"
+
+"I can't say that I did, sir."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Why not?" echoed the private.
+
+"Yes - why not?  Don't repeat my words.  How did it happen that
+you didn't notice the windows?"
+
+"Because they were in darkness, sir."
+
+O'Moy's eyes gleamed.  "All of them?"
+
+"Certainly, sir, all of them."
+
+"You are quite certain of that?"
+
+"Oh, quite certain, sir.  If a light had shown from one of them I
+couldn't have failed to notice it."
+
+"That will do."
+
+"Captain Tremayne - " began the president.
+
+"I have no questions for the witness, sir," Tremayne announced.
+
+Sir Harry's face expressed surprise.  "After the statement he has
+just made?" he exclaimed, and thereupon he again invited the prisoner,
+in a voice that was as grave as his countenance, to cross-examine
+he witness; he did more than invite - he seemed almost to plead.
+But Tremayne, preserving by a miracle his outward calm, for all that
+inwardly he was filled with despair and chagrin to see what a pit
+he had dug for himself by his falsehood, declined to ask any
+questions.
+
+Private Bates retired, and Mullins was recalled.  A gloom seemed to
+have settled now upon the court.  A moment ago their way had seemed
+fairly clear to its members, and they had been inwardly
+congratulating themselves that they were relieved from the grim
+necessity of passing sentence upon a brother officer esteemed by all
+who knew him.  But now a subtle change had crept in.  The statement
+drawn by Sir Terence from the sentry appeared flatly to contradict
+Captain Tremayne's own account of his movements on the night in
+question.
+
+"You told the court," O'Moy addressed the witness Mullins, consulting
+his notes as he did so, "that on the night on which Count Samoval met
+his death, I sent you at ten minutes past twelve to take a letter to
+the sergeant of the guard, an urgent letter which was to be forwarded
+to its destination first thing on the following morning.  And it was
+in fact in the course of going upon this errand that you discovered
+the prisoner kneeling beside the body of Count Samoval.  This is
+correct, is it not?"
+
+"It is, sir."
+
+" Will you now inform the court to whom that letter was addressed?"
+
+"It was addressed to the Commissary-General."
+
+"You read the superscription?"
+
+"I am not sure whether I did that, but I clearly remember, sir, that
+you told me at the time that it was for the Commissary-General."
+
+Sir Terence signified that he had no more to ask, and again the
+president invited the prisoner to question the witness, to receive
+again the prisoner's unvarying refusal.
+
+And now O'Moy rose in his place to announce that he had himself a
+further statement to, make to the court, a statement which he had
+not conceived necessary until he had heard the prisoner's account
+of his movements during the half-hour he had spent at Monsanto on
+the night of the duel.
+
+"You have heard from Sergeant Flynn and my butler Mullins that the
+letter carried from me by the latter to the former on the night
+of the 28th was a letter for the Commissary-General of an urgent
+character, to be forwarded first thing in the morning.  If the
+prisoner insists upon it, the Commissary-General himself may be
+brought before this court to confirm my assertion that that
+communication concerned a complaint from headquarters on the
+subject of the tents supplied to the third division Sir Thomas
+Picton's - at Celorico.  The documents concerning that complaint
+ - that is to say, the documents upon which we are to presume that
+the prisoner was at work during tine half-hour in question - were
+at the time in my possession in my own private study and in another
+wing of the building altogether."
+
+Sir Terence sat down amid a rustling stir that ran through the
+court, but was instantly summoned to his feet again by the president.
+
+"A moment, Sir Terence.  The prisoner will no doubt desire to
+question you on that statement."  And he looked with serious eyes
+at Captain Tremayne.
+
+"I have no questions for Sir Terence, sir," was his answer.
+
+Indeed, what question could he have asked?  The falsehoods he had
+uttered had woven themselves into a rope about his neck, and he
+stood before his brother officers now in an agony of shame, a man
+discredited, as he believed.
+
+"But no doubt you will desire the presence of the
+Commissary-General?"  This was from Colonel Fletcher his own
+colonel and a man who esteemed him - and it was asked in accents
+that were pleadingly insistent.
+
+"What purpose could it serve, sir?  Sir Terence's words are partly
+confirmed by the evidence he has just elicited from Sergeant Flynn
+and his butler Mullins.  Since he spent the night writing a letter
+to the Commissary, it is not to be doubted that the subject would
+be such as he states, since from my own knowledge it was the most
+urgent matter in our hands.  And, naturally, he would not have
+written without having the documents at his side.  To summon the
+Commissary-General would be unnecessarily to waste the time of the
+court.  It follows that I must have been mistaken, and this I admit."
+
+"But how could you be mistaken?" broke from the president.
+
+"I realise your "difficulty in crediting, it.  But
+there it is.  Mistaken I was."
+
+"Very well, sir."  Sir Harry paused and then added "The court will
+be glad to hear you in answer to the further evidence adduced to
+refute your statement in your own defence."
+
+"I have nothing further to say, sir," was Tremayne's answer.
+
+"Nothing further?"  The president seemed aghast.  " Nothing, sir."
+
+And now Colonel Fletcher leaned forward to exhort him.  "Captain
+Tremayne," he said, "let me beg you to realise the serious
+position in which you are placed."
+
+"I assure you, sir, that I realise it fully."
+
+"Do you realise that the statements you have made to account for
+your movements during the half-hour that you were at Monsanto
+have been disproved?  You have heard Private Bates's evidence to the
+effect that at the time when you say you were at work in the offices,
+those offices remained in darkness.  And you have heard Sir Terence's
+statement that the documents upon which you claim to have been at
+work were at the time in his own hands.  Do you realise what
+inference the court will be compelled to draw from this?"
+
+"The court must draw whatever inference it pleases," answered the
+captain without heat.
+
+Sir Terence stirred.  "Captain Tremayne," said he, "I wish to add
+my own exhortation to that of your colonel!  Your position has
+become extremely perilous.  If you are concealing anything that may
+extricate you from it, let me enjoin you to take the court frankly
+and fully into your confidence."
+
+The words in themselves were kindly, but through them ran a note of
+bitterness, of cruel derision, that was faintly perceptible to
+Tremayne and to one or two others.
+
+Lord Wellington's piercing eyes looked a moment at O'Moy, then
+turned upon the prisoner.  Suddenly he spoke, his voice as calm
+and level as his glance.
+
+"Captain Tremayne - if the president will permit me to address you
+in the interests of truth and justice - you bear, to my knowledge,
+the reputation of an upright, honourable man.  You are a man so
+unaccustomed to falsehood that when you adventure upon it, as you
+have obviously just done, your performance is a clumsy one, its
+faults easily distinguished.  That you are concealing something the
+court must have perceived.  If you are not concealing something
+other than that Count Samoval fell by your hand, let me enjoin you
+to speak out.  If you are shielding any one - perhaps the real
+perpetrator of this deed - let me assure you that your honour as
+a soldier demands, in the interests of truth and justice, that you
+should not continue silent."
+
+Tremayne looked into the stern face of the great soldier, and his
+glance fell away.  He made a little gesture of helplessness, then
+drew himself stiffly up.
+
+"I have nothing more to say."
+
+"Then, Captain Tremayne," said the president, "the court will pass
+to the consideration of its finding.  And if you cannot account for
+the half-hour that you spent at Monsanto while Count Samoval was
+meeting his death, I am afraid that, in view of all the other
+evidences against you, your position is likely to be one of
+extremest gravity.
+
+"For the last time, sir, before I order your removal, let me add
+my own to the exhortations already addressed to you, that you
+should speak.  If still you elect to remain silent, the court, I
+fear, will be unable to draw any conclusion but one from your
+attitude."
+
+For a long moment Captain Tremayne stood there in tense, expectant
+silence.  Yet he was not considering; he was waiting.  Lady O'Moy
+he knew to be in court, behind him.  She had heard, even as he
+had heard, that his fate hung perhaps upon whether Richard Butler's
+presence were to be betrayed or not.  Not for him to break faith
+with her.  Let her decide.  And, awaiting that decision, he stood
+there, silent, like a man considering.  And then, because no woman's
+voice broke the silence to proclaim at once his innocence, and the
+alibi that must ensure his acquittal, he spoke at last.
+
+"I thank you, sir.  Indeed, I am very grateful to the court for the
+consideration it has shown me.  I appreciate it deeply, but I have
+nothing more to say."
+
+And then, when all seemed lost, a woman's voice rang out at last:
+
+"But I have!"
+
+Its sharp, almost strident note acted like an electric discharge
+upon the court; but no member of the assembly was more deeply
+stricken than Captain Tremayne.  For though the voice was a woman's,
+yet it was not the voice for which he had been waiting.
+
+In his excitement he turned, to see Miss Armytage standing there,
+straight and stiff, her white face stamped with purpose; and beside
+her, still seated, clutching her arm in an agony of fear, Lady O'Moy,
+murmuring for all to hear her:
+
+"No, no, Sylvia.  Be silent, for God's sake!"
+
+But Sylvia had risen to speak, and speak she did, and though the
+words she uttered were such as a virgin might wish to whisper with
+veiled countenance and averted glance, yet her utterance of them
+was bold to the point of defiance.
+
+"I can tell you why Captain Tremayne is silent.  I can tell you
+whom he shields."
+
+"Oh God!" gasped Lady O'Moy, wondering through her anguish how
+Sylvia could have become possessed of her secret.
+
+"Miss Armytage - I implore you!" cried Tremayne, forgetting where
+he stood, his voice shaking at last, his hand flung out to silence
+her.
+
+And then the heavy voice of O'Moy crashed in:
+
+"Let her speak.  Let us have the truth - the truth!"  And he
+smote the table with his clenched fist.
+
+"And you shall have it," answered Miss Armytage.  "Captain Tremayne
+keeps silent to shield a woman - his mistress."
+
+Sir Terence sucked in his breath with a whistling sound.  Lady O'Moy
+desisted from her attempts to check the speaker and fell to staring
+at her in stony astonishment, whilst Tremayne was too overcome by
+the same emotion to think of interrupting.  The others preserved a
+watchful, unbroken silence.
+
+"Captain Tremayne spent that half-hour at Monsanto in her room.  He
+was with her when he heard the cry that took him to the window.
+Thence he saw the body in the courtyard, and in alarm went down at
+once - without considering the consequences to the woman.  But
+because he has considered them since, he now keeps silent."
+
+"Sir, sir," Captain Tremayne turned in wild appeal to the president,
+"this is not true."  He conceived at once the terrible mistake that
+Miss Armytage had made.  She must have seen him climb down from
+Lady O'Moy's balcony, and she had come to the only possible,
+horrible conclusion.  "This lady is mistaken, I am ready to - "
+
+"A moment, sir.  You are interrupting," the president rebuked.
+
+And then the voice of O'Moy on the note of terrible triumph sounded
+again like a trumpet through the long room.
+
+"Ah, but it is the truth at last.  We have it now.  Her name!  Her
+name!" he shouted.  "Who was this wanton?"
+
+Miss Armytage's answer was as a bludgeon-stroke to his ferocious
+exultation.
+
+"Myself.  Captain Tremayne was with me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII FOOL'S MATE
+
+
+Writing years afterwards of this event - in the rather tedious
+volume of reminiscences which he has left us - Major Carruthers
+ventures the opinion that the court should never have been
+deceived; that it should have perceived at once that Miss Armytage
+was lying.  He argues this opinion upon psychological grounds,
+contending that the lady's deportment in that moment of
+self-accusation was the very last that in the circumstances she
+alleged would have been natural to such a character as her own.
+
+"Had she indeed," he writes, "been Tremayne's mistress, as she
+represented herself, it was not in her nature to have announced it
+after the manner in which she did so.  She bore herself before us
+with all the effrontery of a harlot; and it was well known to most
+of us that a more pure, chaste, and modest lady did not live.  There
+was here a contradiction so flagrant that it should have rendered
+her falsehood immediately apparent."
+
+Major Carruthers, of course, is writing in the light of later
+knowledge, and even, setting that aside, I am very far from agreeing
+with his psychological deduction.  Just as a shy man will so
+overreach himself in his efforts to dissemble his shyness as to
+assume an air of positive arrogance, so might a pure lady who had
+succumbed as Miss Armytage pretended, upon finding herself forced
+to such self-accusation, bear herself with a boldness which was no
+more than a mask upon the shame and anguish of her mind.
+
+And this, I think, was the view that was taken by those present.
+The court it was - being composed of honest gentlemen - that felt
+the shame which she dissembled.  There were the eyes that fell
+away before the spurious effrontery of her own glance.  They were
+disconcerted one and all by this turn of events, without precedent
+in the experience of any, and none more disconcerted - though not
+in the same sense - than Sir Terence.  To him this was checkmate
+ - fool's mate indeed.  An unexpected yet ridiculously simple move
+had utterly routed him at the very outset of the deadly game that
+he was playing.  He had sat there determined to have either
+Tremayne's life or the truth, publicly avowed, of Tremayne's
+dastardly betrayal.  He could not have told you which he preferred.
+But one or the other he was fiercely determined to have, and now
+the springs of the snare in which he had so cunningly taken Tremayne
+had been forced apart by utterly unexpected hands.
+
+"It's a lie!" he bellowed angrily.  But he bellowed, it seemed, upon
+deaf ears.  The court just sat and stared, utterly and hopelessly at
+a loss how to proceed.  And then the dry voice of Wellington followed
+Sir Terence, cutting sharply upon the dismayed silence.
+
+"How can you know that?" he asked the adjutant.  "The matter is one
+upon which few would be qualified to contradict Miss Armytage.  You
+will observe, Sir Harry, that even Captain Tremayne has not thought
+it worth his while to do so."
+
+Those words pulled the captain from the spell of sheer horrified
+amazement in which he had stood, stricken dumb, ever since Miss
+Armytage had spoken.
+
+"I - I - am so overwhelmed by the amazing falsehood with which Miss
+Armytage has attempted to save me from the predicament in which I
+stand.  For it is that, gentlemen.  On my oath as a soldier and a
+gentleman, there is not a word of truth in what Miss Armytage has
+said."
+
+"But if there were," said Lord Wellington, who seemed the only
+person present to retain a cool command of his wits, "your honour
+as a soldier and a gentleman - and this lady's honour - must still
+demand of you the perjury."
+
+"But, my lord, I protest - "
+
+"You are interrupting me, I think," Lord Wellington rebuked him
+coldly, and under the habit of obedience and the magnetic eye of
+his lordship the captain lapsed into anguished silence.
+
+"I am of opinion, gentlemen," his lordship addressed the court,
+"that this affair has gone quite far enough.  Miss Armytage's
+testimony has saved a deal of trouble.  It has shed light upon much
+that was obscure, and it has provided Captain Tremayne with an
+unanswerable alibi.  In my view - and without wishing unduly to
+influence the court in its decision - it but remains to pronounce
+Captain Tremayne's acquittal, thereby enabling him to fulfil towards
+this lady a duty which the circumstances would seem to have rendered
+somewhat urgent."
+
+They were words that lifted an intolerable burden from Sir Harry's
+shoulders.
+
+In immense relief, eager now to make an end, he looked to right and
+left.  Everywhere he met nodding heads and murmurs of "Yes, Yes."
+Everywhere with one exception.  Sir Terence, white to the lips, gave
+no sign of assent, and yet dared give none of dissent.  The eye of
+Lord Wellington was upon him, compelling him by its eagle glance.
+
+"We are clearly agreed," the president began, but Captain Tremayne
+interrupted him.
+
+"But you are wrongly agreed."
+
+"Sir, sir!"
+
+"You shall listen.  It is infamous that I should owe my acquittal
+to the sacrifice of this lady's good name."
+
+Damme!  That is a matter that any parson can put right," said his
+lordship.
+
+"Your lordship is mistaken," Captain Tremayne insisted, greatly
+daring.  "The honour of this lady is more dear to me than my life."
+
+"So we perceive," was the dry rejoinder.  "These outbursts do you
+a certain credit, Captain Tremayne.  But they waste the time of the
+court."
+
+And then the president made his announcement
+
+"Captain Tremayne, you are acquitted of the charge of killing Count
+Samoval, and you are at liberty to depart and to resume your usual
+duties.  The court congratulates you and congratulates.  itself
+upon having reached this conclusion in the case of an officer so
+estimable as yourself."
+
+"Ah, but, gentlemen, hear me yet a moment.  You, my lord - "
+
+"The court has pronounced.  The matter is at an end," said
+Wellington, with a shrug, and immediately upon the words he rose,
+and the court rose with him.  Immediately, with rattle of sabres and
+sabretaches, the officers who had composed the board fell into groups
+and broke into conversation out of a spirit of consideration for
+Tremayne, and definitely to mark the conclusion of the proceedings.
+
+Tremayne, white and trembling, turned in time to see Miss Armytage
+leaving the hall and assisting Colonel Grant to support Lady O'Moy,
+who was in a half-swooning condition.
+
+He stood irresolute, prey to a torturing agony of mind, cursing
+himself now for his silence, for not having spoken the truth and
+taken the consequences together with Dick Butler.  What was Dick
+Butler to him, what was his own life to him - if they should they
+should demand it for the grave breach of duty he had committed by
+his readiness to assist a proscribed offender to escape - compared
+with the honour of Sylvia Armytage?  And she, why had she done this
+for him?  Could it be possible that she cared, that she was concerned
+so much for his life as to immolate her honour to deliver him from
+peril?  The event would seem to prove it.  Yet the overmastering joy
+that at any other time, and in any other circumstances, such a
+revelation must have procured him, was stifled now by his agonised
+concern for the injustice to which she had submitted herself.
+
+And then, as he stood there, a suffering, bewildered man, came
+Carruthers to grasp his hand and in terms of warm friendship to
+express satisfaction at his acquittal.
+
+"Sooner than have such a price as that paid - " he said bitterly,
+and with a shrug left his sentence unfinished.
+
+O'Moy came stalking past him, pale-faced, with eyes that looked
+neither to right nor left.
+
+"O'Moy!" he cried.
+
+Sir Terence checked, and stood stiffly as if to attention, his
+handsome blue eyes blazing into the captain's own.  Thus a moment.
+Then:
+
+"We will talk of this again, you and I," he said grimly, and passed
+on and out with clanking step, leaving Tremayne to reflect that the
+appearances certainly justified Sir Terence's resentment.
+
+"My God, Carruthers ! What must he think of me?" he ejaculated.
+
+"If you ask me, I think that he has suspected this from the very
+beginning.  Only that could account for the hostility of his attitude
+towards you, for the persistence with which he has sought either to
+convict or wring the truth from you."
+
+Tremayne looked askance at the major.  In such a tangle as this
+it was impossible to keep the attention fixed upon any single thread.
+
+"His mind must be disabused at once," he answered.  "I must go to
+him."
+
+O'Moy had already vanished.
+
+There were one or two others would have checked the adjutant's
+departure, but he had heeded none.  In the quadrangle he nodded
+curtly to Colonel Grant, who would have detained him.  But he
+passed on and went to shut himself up in his study with his mental
+anguish that was compounded of so many and so diverse emotions.
+He needed above all things to be alone and to think, if thought were
+possible to a mind so distraught as his own.  There were now so many
+things to be faced, considered, and dealt with.  First and foremost
+ - and this was perhaps the product of inevitable reaction - was the
+consideration of his own duplicity, his villainous betrayal of trust
+undertaken deliberately, but with an aim very different from that
+which would appear.  He perceived how men must assume now, when
+the truth of Samoval's death became known as become known it must
+- that he had deliberately fastened upon another his own crime.  The
+fine edifice of vengeance he had been so skilfully erecting had
+toppled about his ears in obscene ruin, and he was a man not only
+broken, but dishonoured.  Let him proclaim the truth now and none
+would believe it.  Sylvia Armytage's mad and inexplicable
+self-accusation was a final bar to that.  Men of honour would scorn
+him, his friends would turn from him in disgust, and Wellington, that
+great soldier whom he worshipped, and whose esteem he valued above
+all possessions, would be the first to cast him out.  He would appear
+as a vulgar murderer who, having failed by falsehood to fasten the
+guilt upon an innocent man, sought now by falsehood still more
+damnable, at the cost of his wife's honour, to offer some mitigation
+of his unspeakable offence.
+
+Conceive this terrible position in which his justifiable jealousy
+- his naturally vindictive rage - had so irretrievably ensnared him.
+He had been so intent upon the administration of poetic justice, so
+intent upon condignly punishing the false friend who had dishonoured
+him, upon finding a balm for his lacerated soul in the spectacle of
+Tremayne's own ignominy, that he had never paused to see whither all
+this might lead him.
+
+He had been a fool to have adopted these subtle, tortuous ways; a
+fool not to have obeyed the earlier and honest impulse which had led
+him to take that case of pistols from the drawer.  And he was served
+as a fool deserves to be served.  His folly had recoiled upon him to
+destroy him.  Fool's mate had checked his perfidious vengeance at a
+blow.
+
+Why had Sylvia Armytage discarded her honour to make of it a cloak
+for the protection of Tremayne?  Did she love Tremayne and take
+that desperate way to save a life she accounted lost, or was it that
+she knew the truth, and out of affection for Una had chosen to
+immolate herself?
+
+Sir Terence was no psychologist.  But he found it difficult to
+believe in so much of self-sacrifice from a woman for a woman's sake,
+however dear.  Therefore he held to the first alternative.  To
+confirm it came the memory of Sylvia's words to him on the night of
+Tremayne's arrest.  And it was to such a man that she gave the
+priceless treasure of her love; for such a man, and in such a sordid
+cause, that she sacrificed the inestimable jewel of her honour?  He
+laughed through clenched teeth at a situation so bitterly ironical.
+Presently he would talk to her.  She should realise what she had done,
+and he would wish her joy of it.  First, however, there was something
+else to do.  He flung himself wearily into the chair at his
+writing-table, took up a pen and began to write.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE TRUTH
+
+
+To Captain Tremayne, fretted with impatience in the diningroom,
+came, at the end of a long hour of waiting, Sylvia Armytage.  She
+entered unannounced, at a moment when for the third time he was on
+the point of ringing for Mullins, and for a moment they stood
+considering each other mutually ill at ease.  Then Miss Armytage
+closed the door and came forward, moving with that grace peculiar
+to her, and carrying her head erect, facing Captain Tremayne now
+with some lingering signs of the defiance she had shown the
+members of the court-martial.
+
+"Mullins tells me that you wish to see me," she said the merest
+conventionality to break the disconcerting, uneasy silence.
+
+"After what has happened that should not surprise you," said
+Tremayne.  His agitation was clear to behold, his usual
+imperturbability all departed.  "Why," he burst out suddenly, "why
+did you do it?"
+
+She looked at him with the faintest ghost of a smile on her lips,
+as if she found the question amusing.  But before she could frame
+any answer he was speaking again, quickly and nervously.
+
+"Could you suppose that I should wish to purchase my life at such
+a price?  Could you suppose that your honour was not more precious
+to me than my life?  It was infamous that you should have sacrificed
+yourself in this manner."
+
+"Infamous of whom?" she asked him coolly.
+
+The question gave him pause.  "I don't know!" he cried desperately.
+"Infamous of the circumstances, I suppose."
+
+She shrugged.  "The circumstances were there, and they had to be met.
+I could think of no other way of meeting them."
+
+Hastily he answered her out of his anger for her sake: "It should
+not have been your affair to meet them at all."
+
+He saw the scarlet flush sweep over her face and leave it deathly
+white, and instantly he perceived how horribly he had blundered.
+
+"I'm sorry to have been interfering," she answered stiffly, "but,
+after all, it is not a matter that need trouble you."  And on the
+words she turned to depart again.  "Good-day, Captain Tremayne."
+
+"Ah, wait!"  He flung himself between her and the door.  "We must
+understand each other, Miss Armytage."
+
+"I think we do, Captain Tremayne," she answered, fire dancing in
+her eyes.  And she added: "You are detaining me."
+
+"Intentionally."  He was calm again; and he was masterful for the
+first time in all his dealings with her.  "We are very far from any
+understanding.  Indeed, we are overhead in a misunderstanding
+already.  You misconstrue my words.  I am very angry with you.  I
+do not think that in all my life I have ever been so angry with
+anybody.   But you are not to mistake the source of my anger.  I
+am angry with you for the great wrong you have done yourself."
+
+"That should not be your affair," she answered him, thus flinging
+back the offending phrase.
+
+"But it is.  I make it mine," he insisted.
+
+"Then I do not give you the right.  Please let me pass."  She
+looked him steadily in the face, and her voice was calm to coldness.
+Only the heave of her bosom betrayed the agitation under which she
+was labouring.
+
+"Whether you give me the right or not, I intend to take it," he
+insisted.
+
+"You are very rude," she reproved him.
+
+He laughed.  "Even at the risk of being rude, then.  I must make
+myself clear to you.  I would suffer anything sooner than leave
+you under any misapprehension of the grounds upon which I should
+have preferred to face a firing party rather than have been rescued
+at the sacrifice of your good name."
+
+"I hope," she said, with faint but cutting irony, "you do not intend
+to offer me the reparation of marriage."
+
+It took his breath away for a moment.  It was a solution that in
+his confused and irate state of mind he had never even paused to
+consider.  Yet now that it was put to him in this scornfully
+reproachful manner he perceived not only that it was the only
+possible course, but also that on that very account it might be
+considered by her impossible.
+
+Her testiness was suddenly plain to him.  She feared that he was
+come to her with an offer of marriage out of a sense of duty, as an
+amende, to correct the false position into which, for his sake, she
+had placed herself.  And he himself by his blundering phrase had
+given colour to that hideous fear of hers.
+
+He considered a moment whilst he stood there meeting her defiant
+glance.  Never had she been more desirable in his eyes; and
+hopeless as his love for her had always seemed, never had it been
+in such danger of hopelessness as at this present moment, unless he
+proceeded here with the utmost care.  And so Ned Tremayne became
+subtle for the first time in his honest, straightforward, soldierly
+life.  "No," he answered boldly, "I do not intend it."
+
+"I am glad that you spare me that," she answered him, yet her pallor
+seemed to deepen under his glance.
+
+"And that," he continued, "is the source of all my anger, against
+you, against myself, and against circumstances.  If I had deemed
+myself remotely worthy of you," he continued, "I should have asked
+you weeks ago to be my wife.  Oh, wait, and hear me out.  I have
+more than once been upon the point of doing so - the last time was
+that night on the balcony at Count Redondo's.  I would have spoken
+then; I would have taken my courage in my hands, confessed my
+unworthiness and my love.  But I was restrained because, although I
+might confess, there was nothing I could ask.  I am a poor man,
+Sylvia, you are the daughter of a wealthy one; men speak of you as
+an heiress.  To ask you to marry me - "  He broke off.  "You realise
+that I could not; that I should have been deemed a fortune-hunter,
+not only by the world, which matters nothing, but perhaps by
+yourself, who matter everything.  I - I -" he faltered, fumbling for
+words to express thoughts of an overwhelming intricacy.  "It was
+not perhaps that so much as the thought that, if my suit should come
+to prosper, men would say you had thrown yourself away on a
+fortune-hunter.  To myself I should have accounted the reproach well
+earned, but it seemed to me that it must contain something slighting
+to you, and to shield you from all slights must be the first concern
+of my deep worship for you.  That," he ended fiercely, "is why I am
+so angry, so desperate at the slight you have put upon yourself for
+my sake - for me, who would have sacrificed life and honour and
+everything I hold of any account, to keep you up there, enthroned
+not only in my own eyes, but in the eyes of every man."
+
+He paused, and looked at her and she at him.  She was still very
+white, and one of her long, slender hands was pressed to her bosom
+as if to contain and repress tumult.  But her eyes were smiling,
+and yet it was a smile he could not read; it was compassionate,
+wistful, and yet tinged, it seemed to him, with mockery.
+
+"I suppose," he said, "it would be expected of me in the
+circumstances to seek words in which to thank you for what you have
+done.  But I have no such words.  I am not grateful.  How could I be
+grateful?  You have destroyed the thing that I most valued in this
+world."
+
+"What have I destroyed?" she asked him.
+
+"Your own good name; the respect that was your due from all men."
+
+"Yet if I retain your own?"
+
+"What is that worth?" he asked almost resentfully.
+
+"Perhaps more than all the rest."  She took a step forward and set
+her hand upon his arm.  There was no mistaking now her smile.  It
+was all tenderness, and her eyes were shining.  "Ned, there is only
+one thing to be done."
+
+He looked down at her who was only a little less tall than himself,
+and the colour faded from his own face now.
+
+"You haven't understood me after all," he said.  "I was afraid you
+would not.  I have no clear gift of words, and if I had, I am trying
+to say something that would overtax any gift."
+
+"On the contrary, Ned, I understand you perfectly.  I don't think
+I have ever understood you until now.  Certainly never until now
+could I be sure of what I hoped."
+
+"Of what you hoped?"  His voice sank as if in awe.  "What?" he asked.
+
+She looked away, and her persisting, yet ever-changing smile grew
+slightly arch.
+
+"You do not then intend to ask me to marry you?" she said.
+
+"How could I?"  It was an explosion almost of anger.  "You yourself
+suggested that it would be an insult; and so it would.  It is to
+take advantage of the position into which your foolish generosity
+has betrayed you.  Oh!" he clenched his fists and shook them a moment
+at his sides.
+
+"Very well," she said.  "In that case I must ask you to marry me."
+
+"You?" He was thunderstruck.
+
+"What alternative do you leave me?  You say that I have destroyed
+my good name.  You must provide me with a new one.  At all costs I
+must become an honest woman.  Isn't that the phrase?"
+
+"Don't!" he cried, and pain quivered in his voice.  "Don't jest
+upon it."
+
+"My dear," she said, and now she held out both hands to him, "why
+trouble yourself with things of no account, when the only thing
+that matters to us is within our grasp?  We love each other, and - "
+
+Her glance fell away, her lip trembled, and her smile at last took
+flight.  He caught her hands, holding them in a grip that hurt her;
+he bent his head, and his eyes sought her own, but sought in vain.
+
+"Have you considered - " he was beginning, when she interrupted him.
+Her face flushed upward, surrendering to that questing glance of
+his, and its expression was now between tears and laughter.
+
+"You will be for ever considering, Ned.  You consider too much,
+where the issues are plain and simple.  For the last time - will
+you marry me?"
+
+The subtlety he had employed had been greater than he knew, and it
+had achieved something beyond his utmost hopes.
+
+He murmured incoherently and took her to his arms.  I really do not
+see that he could have done anything else.  It was a plain and
+simple issue, and she herself had protested that the issue was
+plain and simple.
+
+And then the door opened abruptly and Sir Terence came in.  Nor did
+he discreetly withdraw as a man of feeling should have done before
+the intimate and touching spectacle that met his eyes.  On the
+contrary, he remained like the infernal marplot that he intended
+to be.
+
+"Very proper," he sneered.  "Very fit and proper that he should
+put right in the eyes of the world the reputation you have damaged
+for his sake, Sylvia.  I suppose you're to be married."
+
+They moved apart, and each stared at O'Moy Sylvia in cold anger,
+Tremayne in chagrin.
+
+"You see, Sylvia," the captain cried, at this voicing of the world's
+opinion he feared so much on her behalf.
+
+"Does she?" said Sir Terence, misunderstanding.  "I wonder?  Unless
+you've made all plain."
+
+The captain frowned.
+
+"Made what plain?" he asked.  "There is something here I don't
+understand, O'Moy.  Your attitude towards me ever since you ordered
+me under arrest has been entirely extraordinary.  It has troubled me
+more than anything else in all this deplorable affair."
+
+"I believe you," snorted O'Moy, as with his hands behind his back
+he strode forward into the room.  He was pale, and there was a set,
+malignant sneer upon his lip, a malignant look in the blue eyes
+that were habitually so clear and honest.
+
+"There have been moments," said Tremayne, "when I have almost felt
+you to be vindictive."
+
+"D'ye wonder?" growled O'Moy.  "Has no suspicion crossed your mind
+that I may know the whole truth?"
+
+Tremayne was taken aback.  "That startles you, eh?" cried O'Moy,
+and pointed a mocking finger at the captain's face, whose whole
+expression had changed to one of apprehension.
+
+"What is it?" cried Sylvia.  Instinctively she felt that under this
+troubled surface some evil thing was stirring, that the issues
+perhaps were not quite as simple as she had deemed them.
+
+There was a pause.  O'Moy, with his back to the window now, his
+hands still clasped behind him, looked mockingly at Tremayne and
+waited.
+
+"Why don't you answer her?" he said at last.  "You were confidential
+enough when I came in.  Can it be that you are keeping something
+back, that you have secrets from the lady who has no doubt promised
+by now to become your wife as the shortest way to mending her recent
+folly?"
+
+Tremayne was bewildered.  His answer, apparently an irrelevance,
+was the mere enunciation of the thoughts O'Moy's announcement had
+provoked.
+
+"Do you mean to say that you have known throughout that I did not
+kill Samoval?" he asked.
+
+"Of course.  How could I have supposed you killed him when I killed
+him myself?"
+
+"You?  You killed him!" cried Tremayne, more and more intrigued.
+And -
+
+"You killed Count Samoval?" exclaimed Miss Armytage.
+
+"To be sure I did," was the answer, cynically delivered, accompanied
+by a short, sharp laugh.  "When I have settled other accounts, and
+put all my affairs in order, I shall save the provost-marshal the
+trouble of further seeking the slayer.  And you didn't know then,
+Sylvia, when you lied so glibly to the court, that your future
+husband was innocent of that?"
+
+"I was always sure of it," she answered, and looked at Tremayne for
+explanation.
+
+O'Moy laughed again.  "But he had not told you so.  He preferred
+that you should think him guilty of bloodshed, of murder even, rather
+than tell you the real truth.  Oh, I can understand.  He is the very
+soul of honour, as you remarked yourself, I think, the other night.
+He knows how much to tell and how much to withhold.  He is master of
+the art of discreet suppression.  He will carry it to any lengths.
+You had an instance of that before the court this morning.  You may
+come to regret, my dear, that you did not allow him to have his own
+obstinate way; that you should have dragged your own spotless purity
+in the mud to provide him with an alibi.  But he had an alibi all
+the time, my child; an unanswerable alibi which he preferred to
+withhold.  I wonder would you have been so ready to make a shield
+of your honour could you have known what you were really shielding?"
+
+"Ned!" she cried.  "Why don't you speak?  Is he to go on in this
+fashion?  Of what is he accusing you?  If you were not with Samoval
+that night, where were you?"
+
+"In a lady's room, as you correctly informed the court," came O'Moy's
+bitter mockery.  "Your only mistake was in the identity of the lady.
+You imagined that the lady was yourself.  A delusion purely.   But
+you and I may comfort each other, for we are fellow-sufferers at
+the hands of this man of honour.  My wife was the lady who
+entertained this gallant in her room that night."
+
+"My God, O'Moy!"  It was a strangled cry from Tremayne.  At last he
+saw light; he understood, and, understanding, there entered his
+heart a great compassion for O'Moy, a conception that he must have
+suffered all the agonies of the damned in these last few days.  "My
+God, you don't believe that I - "
+
+"Do you deny it?"
+
+"The imputation?  Utterly."
+
+"And if I tell you that myself with these eyes I saw you at the
+window of her room with her; if I tell you that I saw the rope
+ladder dangling from her balcony; if I tell you that crouching there
+after I had killed Samoval - killed him, mark me, for saying that
+you and my wife betrayed me; killed him for telling me the filthy
+truth - if I tell you that I heard her attempting to restrain you
+from going down to see what had happened - if I tell you all this,
+will you still deny it, will you still lie?"
+
+"I will still say that all that you imply is false as hell
+and your own senseless jealousy can make it.
+
+"All that I imply?  But what I state - the facts themselves, are
+they true?"
+
+"They are true.  But - "
+
+"True!" cried Miss Armytage in horror.
+
+"Ah, wait," O'Moy bade her with his heavy sneer.  "You interrupt
+him.  He is about to construe those facts so that they shall wear
+an innocent appearance.  He is about to prove himself worthy of
+the great sacrifice you made to save his life.  Well?"  And he
+looked expectantly at Tremayne.
+
+Miss Armytage looked at him too, with eyes from which the dread
+passed almost at once.  The captain was smiling, wistfully,
+tolerantly, confidently, almost scornfully.  Had he been guilty of
+the thing imputed he could not have stood so in her presence.
+
+"O'Moy," he said slowly, "I should tell you that you have played
+the knave in this were it not clear to me that you have played the
+fool."  He spoke entirely without passion.  He saw his way quite
+clearly.  Things had reached a pass in which for the sake of all
+concerned, and perhaps for the sake of Miss Armytage more than any
+one, the whole truth must be spoken without regard to its
+consequences to Richard Butler.
+
+"You dare to take that tone?" began O'Moy in a voice of thunder.
+
+"Yourself shall be the first to justify it presently.  I should be
+angry with you, O'Moy, for what you have done.  But I find my anger
+vanishing in regret.  I should scorn you for the lie you have acted,
+for your scant regard to your oath in the court-martial, for your
+attempt to combat an imagined villainy by a real villainy.  But I
+realise what you have suffered, and in that suffering lies the
+punishment you fully deserve for not having taken the straight
+course, for not having taxed me there and then with the thing that
+you suspected."
+
+"The gentleman is about to lecture me upon morals, Sylvia."  But
+Tremayne let pass the interruption.
+
+"It is quite true that I was in Una's room while you were killing
+Samoval.  But I was not alone with her, as you have so rashly
+assumed.  Her brother Richard was there, and it was on his behalf
+that I was present.  She had been hiding him for a fortnight.  She
+begged me, as Dick's friend and her own, to save him; and I
+undertook to do so.  I climbed to her room to assist him to descend
+by the rope ladder you saw, because he was wounded and could not
+climb without assistance.  At the gates I had the curricle waiting
+in which I had driven up.  In this I was to have taken him on board
+a ship that was leaving that night for England, having made
+arrangements with her captain.  You should have seen, had you
+reflected, that - as I told the court - had I been coming to a
+clandestine meeting, I should hardly have driven up in so open a
+fashion, and left the curricle to wait for me at the gates.
+
+"The death of Samoval and my own arrest thwarted our plans and
+prevented Dick's escape.  That is the truth.  Now that you have it I
+hope you like it, and I hope that you thoroughly relish your own
+behaviour in the matter."
+
+There was a fluttering sigh of relief from Miss Armytage.  Then
+silence followed, in which O'Moy stared at Tremayne, emotion after
+emotion sweeping across his mobile face.
+
+"Dick Butler?" he said at last, and cried out: "I don't believe a
+word of it!  Ye're lying, Tremayne."
+
+"You have cause enough to hope so."
+
+The captain was faintly scornful.
+
+"If it were true, Una would not have kept it from me.  It was to
+me she would have come."
+
+"The trouble with you, O'Moy, is that jealousy seems to have robbed
+you of the power of coherent thought, or else you would remember
+that you were the last man to whom Una could confide Dick's presence
+here.  I warned her against doing so.  I told her of the promise you
+had been compelled to give the secretary, Forjas, and I was even at
+pains to justify you to her when she was indignant with you for
+that.  It would perhaps be better," he concluded, "if you were to
+send for Una."
+
+"It's what I intend," said Sir Terence in a voice that made a threat
+of the statement.  He strode stiffly across the room and pulled open
+the door.  There was no need to go farther.  Lady O'Moy, white and
+tearful, was discovered on the threshold.  Sir Terence stood aside,
+holding the door for her, his face very grim.
+
+She came in slowly, looking from one to another with her troubled
+glance, and finally accepting the chair that Captain Tremayne made
+haste to offer her.  She had so much to say to each person present
+that it was impossible to know where to begin.  It remained for Sir
+Terence to give her the lead she needed, and this he did so soon as
+he had closed the door again.  Planted before it like a sentry, he
+looked at her between anger and suspicion.
+
+"How much did you overhear?" he asked her.
+
+"All that you said about Dick," she answered without hesitation.
+
+"Then you stood listening?"
+
+"Of course.  I wanted to know what you were saying."
+
+"There are other ways of ascertaining that without stooping to
+keyholes," said her husband.
+
+"I didn't stoop," she said, taking him literally.  "I could hear
+what was said without that - especially what you said, Terence.
+You will raise your voice so on the slightest provocation."
+
+"And the provocation in this instance was, of course, of the
+slightest.  Since you have heard Captain Tremayne's story of course
+you'll have no difficulty in confirming it."
+
+"If you still can doubt, O'Moy," said Tremayne, "it must be because
+you wish to doubt; because you are afraid to face the truth now that
+it has been placed before you.  I think, Una, it will spare a deal
+of trouble, and save your husband from a great many expressions
+that he may afterwards regret, if you go and fetch Dick.  God knows,
+Terence has enough to overwhelm him already."
+
+At the suggestion of producing Dick, O'Moy's anger, which had begun
+to simmer again, was stilled.  He looked at his wife almost in
+alarm, and she met his look with one of utter blankness.
+
+"I can't," she said plaintively.  "Dick's gone."
+
+"Gone?" cried Tremayne.
+
+"Gone?" said O'Moy, and then he began to laugh.  "Are you quite sure
+that he was ever here?"
+
+"But - "  She was a little bewildered, and a frown puckered her
+perfect brow.  " Hasn't Ned told you, then?"
+
+"Oh, Ned has told me.  Ned has told!"  His face was terrible.
+
+"And don't you believe him?  Don't you believe me?"  She was more
+plaintive than ever.  It was almost as if she called heaven to
+witness what manner of husband she was forced to endure.  "Then you
+had better call Mullins and ask him.  He saw Dick leave."
+
+"And no doubt," said Miss Armytage mercilessly, "Sir Terence will
+believe his butler where he can believe neither his wife nor his
+friend."
+
+He looked at her in a sort of amazement.  "Do you believe them,
+Sylvia?" he cried.
+
+"I hope I am not a fool," said she impatiently.
+
+"Meaning - " he began, but broke off.  "How long do you say it is
+since Dick left the house?"
+
+"Ten minutes at most," replied her ladyship.
+
+He turned and pulled the door open again.  "Mullins?" he called.
+"Mullins!"
+
+"What a man to live with!" sighed her ladyship, appealing to Miss
+Armytage.  "What a man!"  And she applied a vinaigrette delicately
+to her nostrils.
+
+Tremayne smiled, and sauntered to the window.  And then at last
+came Mullins.
+
+"Has any one left the house within the last ten minutes, Mullins?"
+asked Sir Terence.
+
+Mullins looked ill at ease.
+
+"Sure, sir, you'll not be after - "
+
+"Will you answer my question, man?" roared Sir Terence.
+
+"Sure, then, there's nobody left the house at all but Mr. Butler,
+sir."
+
+"How long had he been here?" asked O'Moy, after a brief pause.
+
+"'Tis what I can't tell ye, sir.  I never set eyes on him until I
+saw him coming downstairs from her ladyship's room as it might be."
+
+"You can go, Mullins."
+
+"I hope, sir - "
+
+"You can go." And Sir Terence slammed the door upon the amazed
+servant, who realised that some unhappy mystery was perturbing the
+adjutant's household.
+
+Sir Terence stood facing them again.  He was a changed man.  The
+fire had all gone out of him.  His head was bowed and his face
+looked haggard and suddenly old.  His lip curled into a sneer.
+
+"Pantaloon in the comedy," he said, remembering in that moment the
+bitter gibe that had cost Samoval his life.
+
+"What did you say?" her ladyship asked him.
+
+"I pronounced my own name," he answered lugubriously.
+
+"It didn't sound like it, Terence."
+
+"It's the name I ought to bear," he said.  "And I killed that liar
+for it - the only truth he spoke."
+
+He came forward to the table.  The full sense of his position
+suddenly overwhelmed him, as Tremayne had said it would.  A groan
+broke from him and he collapsed into a chair, a stricken, broken
+man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE RESIGNATION
+
+
+At once, as he sat there, his elbows on the table, his head in his
+hands, he found himself surrounded by those three, against each of
+whom he had sinned under the spell of the jealousy that had blinded
+him and led him by the nose.
+
+His wife put an arm about his neck in mute comfort of a grief of
+which she only understood the half - for of the heavier and more
+desperate part of his guilt she was still in ignorance.  Sylvia
+spoke to him kindly words of encouragement where no encouragement
+could avail.  But what moved him most was the touch of Tremayne's
+hand upon his shoulder, and Tremayne's voice bidding him brace
+himself to face the situation and count upon them to stand by him
+to the end.
+
+He looked up at his friend and secretary in an amazement that
+overcame his shame.
+
+"You can forgive me, Ned?"
+
+Ned looked across at Sylvia Armytage.  "You have been the means of
+bringing me to such happiness as I should never have reached without
+these happenings," he said.  "What resentment can I bear you, O'Moy?
+Besides, I understand, and who understands can never do anything but
+forgive.  I realise how sorely you have been tried.  No evidence
+more conclusive that you were being wronged could have been placed
+before you."
+
+"But the court-martial," said O'Moy in horror.  He covered his
+face with his hand.  "Oh, my God!  I am dishonoured.  I - I -"  He
+rose, shaking off the arm of his wife and the hand of the friend he
+had wronged so terribly.  He broke away from them and strode to the
+window, his face set and white.  "I think I was mad;" he said.  "I
+know I was mad.  But to have done what I did - "  He shuddered in
+very horror of himself now that he was bereft of the support of
+that evil jealousy that had fortified him against conscience itself
+and the very voice of honour.  Lady O'Moy turned to them, pleading
+for explanation.
+
+"What does he mean?  What has he done?"
+
+Himself he answered her: "I killed Samoval.  It was I who fought
+that duel.  And then believing what I did, I fastened the guilt
+upon Ned, and went the lengths of perjury in my blind effort to
+avenge myself.  That is what I have done.  Tell me, one of you, of
+your charity, what is there left for me to do?"
+
+"Oh!"  It was an outcry of horror and indignation from Una,
+instantly repressed by the tightening grip of Sylvia's hand upon
+her arm.  Miss Armytage saw and understood, and sorrowed for Sir
+Terence.  She must restrain his wife from adding to his present
+anguish.  Yet, "How could you, Terence!  Oh, how could you!" cried
+her ladyship, and so gave way to tears, easier than words to
+express such natures.
+
+"Because I loved you, I suppose," he answered on a note of bitter
+self-mockery.  "That was the justification I should have given
+had I been asked; that was the justification I accounted
+sufficient."
+
+"But then," she cried, a new horror breaking on her mind - "if
+this is discovered - Terence, what will become of you?"
+
+He turned and came slowly back until he stood beside her.  Facing
+now the inevitable, he recovered some of his calm.
+
+"It must be discovered," he said quietly.  "For the sake of
+everybody concerned it must - "
+
+"Oh, no, no!"  She sprang up and clutched his arm in terror.
+"They may fail to discover the truth,"
+
+"They must not, my dear," he answered her; stroking the fair head
+that lay against his breast.  "They must not fail.  I must see to
+that."
+
+"You? You?"  Her eyes dilated as she looked at him.  She caught
+ her breath on a gasping sob.  "Ah no, Terence," she cried
+wildly.  "You must not; you must not.  You must say nothing -
+for my sake, Terence, if you love me, oh, for my sake, Terence!"
+
+"For honour's sake, I must," he answered her.  "And for the sake
+of Sylvia and of Tremayne, whom I have wronged, and - "
+
+"Not for my sake, Terence," Sylvia interrupted him.
+
+He looked at her, and then at Tremayne.
+
+"And you, Ned - what do you say?" he asked.
+
+"Ned could not wish - " began her ladyship.
+
+"Please let him speak for himself, my dear," her husband
+interrupted her.
+
+"What can I say?" cried Tremayne, with a gesture that was almost
+of anger.  "How can I advise?  I scarcely know.  You realise
+what you must face if you confess?"
+
+"Fully, and the only part of it I shrink from is the shame and
+scorn I have deserved.  Yet it is inevitable.  You agree, Ned?"
+
+"I am not sure.  None who understands as I understand can feel
+anything but regret.  Oh, I don't know.  The evidence of what you
+suspected was overwhelming, and it betrayed you into this mistake.
+The punishment you would have to face is surely too heavy, and you
+have suffered far more already than you can ever be called upon to
+suffer again, no matter what is done to you.  Oh, I don't know!
+The problem is too deep for me.  There is Una to be considered,
+too.  You owe a duty to her, and if you keep silent it may be
+best for all.  You can depend upon us to stand by you in this."
+
+"Indeed, indeed," said Sylvia.
+
+He looked at them and smiled very tenderly.
+
+"Never was a man blessed with nobler friends who deserved so
+little of them," he said slowly.  "You heap coals of fire upon
+my head.  You shame me through and through.  But have you
+considered, Ned, that all may not depend upon my silence?  What
+if the provost-marshal, investigating now, were to come upon the
+real facts?"
+
+"It is impossible that sufficient should be discovered to convict
+you."
+
+"How can you be sure of that?  And if it were possible, if it
+came to pass, what then would be my position?  You see, Ned!  I
+must accept the punishment I have incurred lest a worse overtake
+me - to put it at its lowest.  I must voluntarily go forward and
+denounce myself before another denounces me.  It is the only way
+to save some rag of honour."
+
+There was a tap at the door, and Mullins came to announce that
+Lord Wellington was asking to see Sir Terence.
+
+"He is waiting in the study, Sir Terence."
+
+"Tell his lordship I will be with him at once."
+
+Mullins departed, and Sir Terence prepared to follow.  Gently he
+disengaged himself from the arms her ladyship now flung about
+him.
+
+"Courage, my dear," he said.  "Wellington may show me more mercy
+than I deserve."
+
+"You are going to tell him?" she questioned brokenly.
+
+"Of course, sweetheart.  What else can I do?  And since you and
+Tremayne find it in your hearts to forgive me, nothing else matters
+very much."  He kissed her tenderly and put her from him.  He looked
+at Sylvia standing beside her and at Tremayne beyond the table.
+"Comfort her," he implored them, and, turning, went out quickly.
+
+Awaiting him in the study he found not only Lord Wellington, but
+Colonel Grant, and by the cold gravity of both their faces he had
+an inspiration that in some mysterious way the whole hideous truth
+was already known to them.
+
+The slight figure of his lordship in its grey frock was stiff and
+erect, his booted leg firmly planted, his hands behind him clutching
+his riding-crop and cocked hat.  His face was set and his voice as he
+greeted O'Moy sharp and staccato.
+
+"Ah, O'Moy, there are one or two matters to be discussed before I
+leave Lisbon."
+
+"I had written to you, sir," replied O'Moy.  "Perhaps you will
+first read my letter."  And he went to fetch it from the
+writing-table, where he had left it when completed an hour earlier.
+
+His lordship took the letter in silence, and after one piercing
+glance at O'Moy broke the seal.  In the background, near the window,
+the tall figure of Colquhoun Grant stood stiffly erect, his hawk
+face inscrutable.
+
+"Ah! Your resignation, O'Moy.  But you give no reasons."  Again his
+keen glance stabbed into the adjutant's face.  "Why this?" he
+asked sharply.
+
+"Because," said Sir Terence, "I prefer to tender it before it is
+asked of me."  He was very white, yet by an effort those deep
+blue eyes of his met the terrible gaze of his chief without
+flinching.
+
+"Perhaps you'll explain," said his lordship coldly.
+
+"In the first place," said O'Moy, "it was myself killed Samoval,
+and since your lordship was a witness of what followed, you will
+realise that that was the least part of my offence."
+
+The great soldier jerked his head sharply backward, tilting forward
+his chin.  "So!" he said.  "Ha!  I beg your pardon, Grant, for
+having disbelieved you."  Then, turning to O'Moy again: "Well," he
+demanded, his voice hard, "have you nothing to add?"
+
+"Nothing that can matter," said O'Moy, with a shrug, and they
+stood facing each other in silence for a long moment.
+
+At last when Wellington spoke his voice had assumed a gentler
+note.
+
+"O'Moy," he said, "I have known you these fifteen years, and we
+have been friends.  Once you carried your friendship, appreciation,
+and understanding of me so far as nearly to ruin yourself on my
+behalf.  You'll not have forgotten the affair of Sir Harry Burrard.
+In all these years I have known you for a man of shining honour,
+an honest, upright gentleman, whom I would have trusted when I
+should have distrusted every other living man.  Yet you stand there
+and confess to me the basest, the most dishonest villainy that I
+have ever known a British officer to commit, and you tell me that
+you have no explanation to offer for your conduct.  Either I have
+never known you, O'Moy, or I do not know you now.  Which is it?"
+
+O'Moy raised his arms, only to let them fall heavily to his sides
+again.
+
+"What explanation can there be?" he asked.  "How can a man who has
+been - as I hope I have - a man of honour in the past explain such
+an act of madness?  It arose out of your order against duelling,"
+he went on.  "Samoval offended me mortally.  He said such things to
+me of my wife's honour that no man could suffer, and I least of any
+man.  My temper betrayed me.  I consented to a clandestine meeting
+without seconds.  It took place here, and I killed him.  And then
+I had, as I imagined - quite wrongly, as I know now - overwhelming
+evidence that what he had told me was true, and I went mad."
+Briefly he told the story of Tremayne's descent from Lady O'Moy's
+balcony and the rest.
+
+"I scarcely know," he resumed, "what it was I hoped to accomplish
+in the end.  I do not know - for I never stopped to consider
+- whether I should have allowed Captain Tremayne to have been shot
+if it had come to that.  All that I was concerned to do was to
+submit him to the ordeal which I conceived he must undergo when he
+saw himself confronted with the choice of keeping silence and
+submitting to his fate, or saving himself by an avowal that could
+scarcely be less bitter than death itself."
+
+"You fool, O'Moy-you damned, infernal fool!" his lordship swore at
+him.  "Grant overheard more than you imagined that night outside
+the gates.  His conclusions ran the truth very close indeed.  But
+I could not believe him, could not believe this of you."'
+
+"Of course not," said O'Moy gloomily.  "I can't believe it of
+myself."
+
+"When Miss Armytage intervened to afford Tremayne an alibi, I
+believed her, in view of what Grant had told me; I concluded that
+hers was the window from which Tremayne had climbed down.  Because
+of what I knew I was there to see that the case did not go to
+extremes against Tremayne.  If necessary Grant must have given full
+evidence of all he knew, and there and then left you to your fate.
+Miss Armytage saved us from that, and left me convinced, but still
+not understanding your own attitude.  And now comes Richard Butler
+to surrender to me and cast himself upon my mercy with another tale
+which completely gives the lie to Miss Armytage's, but confirms
+your own."
+
+"Richard Butler!" cried O'Moy.  "He has surrendered to you?"
+
+"Half-an-hour ago."
+
+Sir Terence turned aside with a weary shrug.  A little laugh that
+was more a sob broke from him.  "Poor Una!" he muttered.
+
+"The tangle is a shocking one - lies, lies everywhere, and in the
+places where they were least to be expected."  Wellington's anger
+flashed out.  "Do you realise what awaits you as a result of all
+this damned insanity?"
+
+"I do, sir.  That is why I place my resignation in your hands.
+The disregard of a general order punishable in any officer is
+beyond pardon in your adjutant-general."
+
+"But that is the least of it, you fool."
+
+"Sure, don't I know? I assure you that I realise it all."
+
+"And you are prepared to face it?"  Wellington was almost savage
+in an anger proceeding from the conflict that went on within him.
+There was his duty as commander-in-chief, and there was his
+friendship for O'Moy and his memory of the past in which O'Moy's
+loyalty had almost been the ruin of him.
+
+"What choice have I?"
+
+His lordship turned away, and strode the length of the room,
+his head bent, his lips twitching.  Suddenly he stopped and
+faced the silent intelligence officer.
+
+"What is to be done, Grant?"
+
+"That is a matter for your lordship.  But if I might venture - "
+
+"Venture and be damned," snapped Wellington.
+
+"The signal service rendered the cause of the allies by the
+death of Samoval might perhaps be permitted to weigh against
+the offence committed by O'Moy."
+
+"How could it?" snapped his lordship.  "You don't know, O'Moy,
+that upon Samoval's body were found certain documents intended for
+Massena.  Had they reached him, or had Samoval carried out the
+full intentions that dictated his quarrel with you, and no doubt
+sent him here depending upon his swordsmanship to kill you, all
+my plans for the undoing of the French would have been ruined.
+Ay, you may stare.  That is another matter in which you have
+lacked discretion.  You may be a fine engineer, O'Moy, but I
+don't think I could have found a less judicious adjutant-general
+if I had raked the ranks of the army on purpose to find an idiot.
+Samoval was a spy - the cleverest spy that we have ever had to
+deal with.  Only his death revealed how dangerous he was.  For
+killing him when you did you deserve the thanks of his Majesty's
+Government, as Grant suggests.  But before you can receive those
+you will have to stand a court-martial for the manner in which
+you killed him, and you will probably be shot.  I can't help
+you.  I hope you don't expect it of me."
+
+"The thought had not so much as occurred to me.  Yet what you
+tell me, sir, lifts something of the load from my mind."
+
+"Does it?  Well, it lifts no load from mine," was the angry
+retort.  He stood considering.  Then with an impatient gesture he
+seemed to dismiss his thoughts.  "I can do nothing," he said,
+"nothing without being false to my duty and becoming as bad as
+you have been, O'Moy, and without any of the sentimental
+justification that existed in your case.  I can't allow the
+matter to be dropped, stifled.  I have never been guilty of such
+a thing, and I refuse to become guilty of it now.  I refuse - do
+you understand?  O'Moy, you have acted; and you must take the
+consequences, and be damned to you."
+
+"Faith, I've never asked you to help me, sir," Sir Terence protested.
+
+"And you don't intend to, I suppose?"
+
+"I do not."
+
+"I am glad of that."  He was in one of those rages which were as
+terrible as they were rare with him.  "I wouldn't have you suppose
+that I make laws for the sake of rescuing people from the
+consequences of disobeying them.  Here is this brother-in-law of
+yours, this fellow Butler, who has made enough mischief in the
+country to imperil our relations with our allies.  And I am half
+pledged to condone his adventure at Tavora.  There's nothing for
+it, O'Moy.  As your friend, I am infernally angry with you for
+placing yourself in this position; as your commanding officer I
+can only order you under arrest and convene a court-martial to
+deal with you."
+
+Sir Terence bowed his head.  He was a little surprised by all
+this heat.  "I never expected anything else," he said.  "And it's
+altogether at a loss I am to understand why your lordship should
+be vexing yourself in this manner."
+
+"Because I've a friendship for you, O'Moy.  Because I remember
+that you've been a loyal friend to me.  And because I must forget
+all this and remember only that my duty is absolutely rigid and
+inflexible.  If I condoned your offence, if I suppressed inquiry,
+I should be in duty and honour bound to offer my own resignation
+to his Majesty's Government.  And I have to think of other things
+besides my personal feelings, when at any moment now the French
+may be over the Agueda and into Portugal."
+
+Sir Terence's face flushed, and his glance brightened.
+
+"From my heart I thank you that you can even think of such things
+at such a time and after what I have done."
+
+"Oh, as to what you have done - I understand that you are a
+fool, O'Moy.  There's no more to be said.  You are to consider
+yourself under arrest.  I must do it if you were my own brother,
+which, thank God, you're not.  Come, Grant.  Good-bye, O'Moy."
+And he held out his hand to him.
+
+Sir Terence hesitated, staring.
+
+"It's the hand of your friend, Arthur Wellesley, I'm offering
+you, not the hand of your commanding officer," said his lordship
+savagely.
+
+Sir Terence took it, and wrung it in silence, perhaps more deeply
+moved than he had yet been by anything that had happened to him
+that morning.
+
+There was a knock at the door, and Mullins opened it to admit
+the adjutant's orderly, who came stiffly to attention.
+
+"Major Carruthers's compliments, sir," he said to O'Moy, "and his
+Excellency the Secretary of the Council of Regency wishes to see
+you very urgently."
+
+There was a pause.  O'Moy shrugged and spread his hands.  This
+message was for the adjutant-general and he no longer filled the
+office.
+
+"Pray tell Major Carruthers that I - " he was beginning, when Lord
+Wellington intervened.
+
+"Desire his Excellency to step across here.  I will see him myself."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+SANCTUARY
+
+
+"I will withdraw, sir," said Terence.
+
+But Wellington detained him.  "Since Dom Miguel asked for you, you
+had better remain, perhaps."
+
+"It is the adjutant-general Dom Miguel desires to see, and I am
+adjutant-general no longer."
+
+"Still, the matter may concern you.  I have a notion that it may
+be concerned with the death of Count Samoval, since I have
+acquainted the Council of Regency with the treason practised by
+the Count.  You had better remain."
+
+Gloomy and downcast, Sir Terence remained as he was bidden.
+
+The sleek and supple Secretary of State was ushered in.  He came
+forward quickly, clicked his heels together and bowed to the three
+men present.
+
+"Sirs, your obedient servant," he announced himself, with a
+courtliness almost out of fashion, speaking in his extraordinarily
+fluent English.  His sallow countenance was extremely grave.  He
+seemed even a little ill at ease.
+
+"I am fortunate to find you here, my lord.  The matter upon which
+I seek your adjutant-general is of considerable gravity - so much
+that of himself he might be unable to resolve it.  I feared you
+might already have departed for the north."
+
+"Since you suggest that my presence may be of service to you, I
+am happy that circumstances should have delayed my departure,"
+was his lordship's courteous answer.  "A chair, Dom Miguel."
+
+Dom Miguel Forjas accepted the proffered chair, whilst Wellington
+seated himself at Sir Terence's desk.  Sir Terence himself remained
+standing with his shoulders to the overmantel, whence he faced
+them both as well as Grant, who, according to his self-effacing
+habit, remained in the background by the window.
+
+"I have sought you," began Dom Miguel, stroking his square chin,
+"on a matter concerned with the late Count Samoval, immediately
+upon hearing that the court-martial pronounced the acquittal of
+Captain Tremayne."
+
+His lordship frowned, and his eagle glance fastened upon the
+Secretary's face.
+
+"I trust, sir, you have not come to question the finding of the
+court-martial."
+
+"Oh, on the contrary - on the contrary!"  Dom Miguel was emphatic.
+"I represent not only the Council, but the Samoval family as well.
+Both realise that it is perhaps fortunate for all concerned that
+in arresting Captain Tremayne the military authorities arrested
+the wrong man, and both have reason to dread the arrest of the
+right one."
+
+He paused, and the frown deepened between Wellington's brows.
+
+"I am afraid," he said slowly, "that I do not quite perceive their
+concern in this matter."
+
+"But is it not clear?" cried Dom Miguel.
+
+"If it were I should perceive it," said his lordship dryly.
+
+"Ah, but let me explain, then.  A further investigation of the
+manner in which Count Samoval met his death can hardly fail to
+bring to light the deplorable practices in which he was engaged;
+for no doubt Colonel Grant, here, would consider it his duty in
+the interests of justice to place before the court the documents
+found upon the Count's dead body.  If I may permit myself an
+observation," he continued, looking round at Colonel Grant, "it
+is that I do not quite understand how this has not already
+happened."
+
+There was a pause in which Grant looked at Wellington as if for
+direction.  But his lordship himself assumed the burden of the
+answer.
+
+"It was not considered expedient in the public interest to do so
+at present," he said.  "And the circumstances did not place us
+under the necessity of divulging the matter."
+
+"There, my lord, if you will allow me to say so, you acted with
+a delicacy and wisdom which the circumstances may not again permit.
+Indeed any further investigation must almost inevitably bring these
+matters to light, and the effect of such revelation would be
+deplorable."
+
+"Deplorable to whom?" asked his lordship.
+
+"To the Count's family and to the Council of Regency."
+
+"I can sympathise with the Count's family, but not with the
+Council."
+
+"Surely, my lord, the Council as a body deserves your sympathy in
+that it is in danger of being utterly discredited by the treason
+of one or two of its members."
+
+Wellington manifested impatience.  "The Council has been warned
+time and again.  I am weary of warning, and even of threatening,
+the Council with the consequences of resisting my policy.  I think
+that exposure is not only what it deserves, but the surest means
+of providing a healthier government in the future.  I am weary of
+picking my way through the web of intrigue with which the Council
+entangles my movements and my dispositions.  Public sympathy has
+enabled it to hamper me in this fashion.  That sympathy will be
+lost to it by the disclosures which you fear."
+
+"My lord, I must confess that there is much reason in what you say."
+He was smoothly conciliatory.  "I understand your exasperation.
+But may I be permitted to assure you that it is not the Council as
+a body that has withstood you, but certain self-seeking members,
+one or two friends of Principal Souza, in whose interests the
+unfortunate and misguided Count Samoval was acting.  Your lordship
+will perceive that the moment is not one in which to stir up public
+indignation against the Portuguese Government.  Once the passions
+of the mob are inflamed, who can say to what lengths they may not
+go, who can say what disastrous consequences may not follow?  It
+is desirable to apply the cautery, but not to burn up the whole
+body."
+
+Lord Wellington considered a moment, fingering an ivory paper-knife.
+He was partly convinced.
+
+"When I last suggested the cautery, to use your own very apt figure,
+the Council did not keep faith with me."
+
+"My lord!"
+
+"It did not, sir.  It removed Antonio de Souza, but it did not take
+the trouble to go further and remove his friends at the same time.
+They remained to carry on his subversive treacherous intrigues.
+What guarantees have I that the Council will behave better on this
+occasion?"
+
+"You have our solemn assurances, my lord, that all those members
+suspected of complicity in this business or of attachment to the
+Souza faction, shall be compelled to resign, and you may depend
+upon the reconstituted Council loyally to support your measures."
+
+"You give me assurances, sir, and I ask for guarantees."
+
+"Your lordship is in possession of the documents found upon Count
+Samoval.  The Council knows this, and this knowledge will compel
+it to guard against further intrigues on the part of any of its
+members which might naturally exasperate you into publishing those
+documents.  Is not that some guarantee?"
+
+His lordship considered, and nodded slowly.  "I admit that it is.
+Yet I do not see how this publicity is to be avoided in the course
+of the further investigations into the manner in which Count
+Samoval came by his death."
+
+"My lord, that is the pivot of the whole matter.  All further
+investigation must be suspended."
+
+Sir Terence trembled, and his eyes turned in eager anxiety upon
+the inscrutable, stern face of Lord Wellington.
+
+"Must!" cried his lordship sharply.
+
+"What else, my lord, in all our interests?" exclaimed the Secretary,
+and he rose in his agitation.
+
+"And what of British justice, sir?" demanded his lordship in a
+forbidding tone.
+
+"British justice has reason to consider itself satisfied.  British
+justice may assume that Count Samoval met his death in the pursuit
+of his treachery.  He was a spy caught in the act, and there and
+then destroyed - a very proper fate.  Had he been taken, British
+justice would have demanded no less.  It has been anticipated.
+Cannot British justice, for the sake of British interests as well
+as Portuguese interests, be content to leave the matter there?"
+
+"An argument of expediency, eh?" said Wellington.  "Why not, my
+lord!  Does not expediency govern politicians?"
+
+"I am not a politician."
+
+"But a wise soldier, my lord, does not lose sight of the political
+consequences of his acts."  And he sat down again.
+
+"Your Excellency may be right," said his lordship.  "Let us be
+quite clear, then.  You suggest, speaking in the name of the Council
+of Regency, that I should suppress all further investigations into
+the manner in which Count Samoval met his death, so as to save his
+family the shame and the Council of Regency the discredit which must
+overtake one and the other if the facts are disclosed - as disclosed
+they would be that Samoval was a traitor and a spy in the pay of the
+French.  That is what you ask me to do.  In return your Council
+undertakes that there shall be no further opposition to my plans for
+the military defence of Portugal, and that all my measures however
+harsh and however heavily they may weigh upon the landowners, shall
+be punctually and faithfully carried out.  That is your Excellency's
+proposal, is it not?"
+
+"Not so much my proposal, my lord, as my most earnest intercession.
+We desire to spare the innocent the consequences of the sins of a
+man who is dead, and well dead."  He turned to O'Moy, standing there
+tense and anxious.  It was not for Dom Miguel to know that it was
+the adjutant's fate that was being decided.  "Sir Terence," he cried,
+"you have been here for a year, and all matters connected with the
+Council have been treated through you.  You cannot fail to see the
+wisdom of my recommendation."
+
+His lordship's eyes flashed round upon O'Moy.  "Ah yes!" he said.
+"What is your feeling in this matter, 'O'Moy?" he inquired, his
+tone and manner void of all expression.
+
+Sir Terence faltered; then stiffened.  "I - The matter is one that
+only your lordship can decide.  I have no wish to influence your
+decision."
+
+"I see.  Ha!  And you, Grant?  No doubt you agree with Dom Miguel?"
+
+"Most emphatically - upon every count, sir," replied the intelligence
+officer without hesitation.  "I think Dom Miguel offers an excellent
+bargain.  And, as he says, we hold a guarantee of its fulfilment."
+
+"The bargain might be improved," said Wellington slowly.
+
+"If your lordship will tell me how, the Council, I am sure, will
+be ready to do all that lies in its power to satisfy you."
+
+Wellington shifted his chair round a little, and crossed his legs.
+He brought his finger-tips together, and over the top of them his
+eyes considered the Secretary of State.
+
+"Your Excellency has spoken of expediency - political expediency.
+Sometimes political expediency can overreach itself and perpetrate
+the most grave injustices.  Individuals at times are unnecessarily
+called upon to suffer in the interests of a cause.  Your Excellency
+will remember a certain affair at Tavora some two months ago - the
+invasion of a convent by a British officer with rather disastrous
+consequences and the loss of some lives."
+
+"I remember it perfectly, my lord.  I had the honour of entertaining
+Sir Terence upon that subject on the occasion of my last visit here."
+
+"Quite so," said his lordship.  "And on the grounds of political
+expediency you made a bargain then with Sir Terence, I understand,
+a bargain which entailed the perpetration of an injustice."
+
+"I am not aware of it, my lord."
+
+"Then let me refresh your Excellency's memory upon the facts.  To
+appease the Council of Regency, or rather to enable me to have my
+way with the Council and remove the Principal Souza, you stipulated
+for the assurance - so that you might lay it before your Council
+ - that the offending officer should be shot when taken."
+
+"I could not help myself in the matter, and - "
+
+"A moment, sir.  That is not the way of British justice, and Sir
+Terence was wrong to have permitted himself to consent; though I
+profoundly appreciate the loyalty to me, the earnest desire to
+assist me, which led him into an act the cost of which to himself
+your Excellency can hardly appreciate.  But the wrong lay in that
+by virtue of this bargain a British officer was prejudged.  He
+was to be made a scapegoat.  He was to be sent to his death when
+taken, as a peace-offering to the people, demanded by the Council
+of Regency.
+
+"Since all this happened I have had the facts of the case placed
+before me.  I will go so far as to tell you, sir, that the officer
+in question has been in my hands for the past hour, that I have
+closely questioned him, and that I am satisfied that whilst he has
+been guilty of conduct which might compel me to deprive him of his
+Majesty's commission and dismiss him from the army, yet that conduct
+is not such as to merit death.  He has chiefly sinned in folly and
+want of judgment.  I reprove it in the sternest terms, and I
+deplore the consequences it had.  But for those consequences the
+nuns of Tavora are almost as much to blame as he is himself.  His
+invasion of their convent was.  a pure error, committed in the belief
+that it was a monastery and as a result of the, porter's foolish
+conduct.
+
+"Now, Sir Terence's word, given in response to your absolute
+demands, has committed us to an unjust course, which I have no
+intention of following.  I will stipulate, sir, that your Council,
+in addition to the matters undertaken, shall relieve us of all
+obligation in this matter, leaving it to our discretion to punish
+Mr. Butler in such manner as we may consider condign.  In return,
+your Excellency, I will undertake that there shall be no further
+investigation into the manner in which Count Samoval came by his
+death, and consequently, no disclosures of the shameful trade in
+which he was engaged.  If your Excellency will give yourself the
+trouble of taking the sense of your Council upon this, we may then
+reach a settlement."
+
+The grave anxiety of Dom Miguel's countenance was instantly
+dispelled.  In his relief he permitted himself a smile.
+
+"My lord, there is not the need to take the sense of the Council.
+The Council has given me carte blanche to obtain your consent to a
+suppression of the Samoval affair.  And without hesitation I accept
+the further condition that you make.  Sir Terence may consider
+himself relieved of his parole in the matter of Lieutenant Butler."
+
+"Then we may look upon the matter as concluded."
+
+"As happily concluded, my lord." Dom Miguel rose to make his
+valedictory oration.  "It remains for me only to thank your lordship
+in the name of the Council for the courtesy and consideration with
+which you have received my proposal and granted our petition.
+Acquainted as I am with the crystalline course of British justice,
+knowing as I do how it seeks ever to act in the full light of day,
+I am profoundly sensible of the cost to your lordship of the
+concession you make to the feelings of the Samoval family and the
+Portuguese Government, and I can assure you that they will be
+accordingly grateful."
+
+"That is very gracefully said, Dom Miguel," replied his lordship,
+rising also.
+
+The Secretary placed a hand upon his heart, bowing.  "It is but
+the poor expression of what I think and feel." And so he took his
+leave of them, escorted by Colonel Grant, who discreetly
+volunteered for the office.
+
+Left alone with Wellington, Sir Terence heaved a great sigh of
+supreme relief.
+
+"In my wife's name, sir, I should like to thank you.  But she
+shall thank you herself for what you have done for me."
+
+"What I have done for you, O'Moy?"  Wellington's slight figure
+stiffened perceptibly, his face and glance were cold and haughty.
+"You mistake, I think, or else you did not hear.  What I have done,
+I have done solely upon grounds of political expediency.  I had
+no choice in the matter, and it was not to favour you, or out of
+disregard for my duty, as you seem to imagine, that I acted as
+I did."
+
+O'Moy bowed his head, crushed under that rebuff.  He clasped
+and unclasped his hands a moment in his desperate anguish.
+
+"I understand," he muttered in a broken voice, "I - I beg your
+pardon, sir."
+
+And then Wellington's slender, firm fingers took him by the arm.
+
+"But I am glad, O'Moy, that I had no choice," he added more gently.
+"As a man, I suppose I may be glad that my duty as
+Commander-in-Chief placed me under the necessity of acting as I
+have done."
+
+Sir Terence clutched the hand in both his own and wrung it
+fiercely, obeying an overmastering impulse.
+
+"Thank you," he cried.  "Thank you for that!"
+
+"Tush!" said Wellington, and then abruptly: "What are you going
+to do, O'Moy?" he asked.
+
+"Do?" said O'Moy, and his blue eyes looked pleadingly down into
+the sternly handsome face of his chief, "I am in your hands, sir."
+
+"Your resignation is, and there it must remain, O'Moy.  You
+understand?"
+
+"Of course, sir.  Naturally you could not after this - "  He
+shrugged and broke off.  "But must I go home?" he pleaded.
+
+"What else?  And, by God, sir, you should be thankful, I think."
+
+"Very well," was the dull answer, and then he flared out.  "Faith,
+it's your own fault for giving me a job of this kind.  You knew
+me.  You know that I am just a blunt, simple soldier - that my
+place is at the head of a regiment, not at the head of an
+administration.  You should have known that by putting me out of
+my proper element I was bound to get into trouble sooner or later."
+
+"Perhaps I do," said Wellington.  "But what am I to do with you
+now?"  He shrugged, and strode towards the window.  "You had better
+go home, O'Moy.  Your health has suffered out here, and you are not
+equal to the heat of summer that is now increasing.  That is the
+reason of this resignation.  You understand?"
+
+"I shall be shamed for ever," said O'Moy.  "To go home when the
+army is about to take the field!"
+
+But Wellington did not hear him, or did not seem to hear him.
+He had reached the window and his eye was caught by something that
+he saw in the courtyard.
+
+"What the devil's this now?" he rapped out.  "That is one of Sir
+Robert Craufurd's aides."
+
+He turned and went quickly to the door.  He opened it as rapid
+steps approached along the passage, accompanied by the jingle of
+spurs and the clatter of sabretache and trailing sabre.  Colonel
+Grant appeared, followed by a young officer of Light Dragoons who
+was powdered from head to foot with dust.  The youth - he was
+little more - lurched forward wearily, yet at sight of Wellington
+he braced himself to attention and saluted.
+
+"You appear to have ridden hard, sir," the Commander greeted him.
+
+"From Almeida in forty-seven hours, my lord," was the answer.
+"With these from Sir Robert."  And he proffered a sealed letter.
+
+"What is your name?" Wellington inquired, as he took the package.
+
+"Hamilton, my lord," was the answer; "Hamilton of the Sixteenth,
+aide-de-camp to Sir Robert Craufurd."
+
+Wellington nodded.  "That was great horsemanship, Mr. Hamilton,"
+he commended him; and a faint tinge in the lad's haggard cheeks
+responded to that rare praise.
+
+"The urgency was great, my lord," replied Mr. Hamilton.
+
+"The French columns are in movement.  Ney and Junot advanced to
+the investment of Ciudad Rodrigo on the first of the month."
+
+"Already!" exclaimed Wellington, and his countenance set.
+
+"The commander, General Herrasti, has sent an urgent appeal to Sir
+Robert for assistance."
+
+"And Sir Robert?"  The question came on a sharp note of apprehension,
+for his lordship was fully aware that valour was the better part
+of Sir Robert Craufurd's discretion.
+
+"Sir Robert asks for orders in this dispatch, and refuses to stir
+from Almeida without instructions from your lordship."
+
+"Ah!!"  It was a sigh of relief.  He broke the seal and spread the
+dispatch.  He read swiftly.  "Very well," was all he said, when he
+had reached the end of Sir Robert's letter.  " I shall reply to
+this in person and at, once.  You will be in need of rest, Mr.
+Hamilton.  You had best take a day to recuperate, then follow me
+to Almeida.  Sir Terence no doubt will see to your immediate needs."
+
+"With pleasure, Mr. Hamilton," replied Sir Terence mechanically -
+for his own concerns weighed upon him at this moment more heavily
+than the French advance.  He pulled the bell-rope, and into the
+fatherly hands of Mullins, who came in response to the summons,
+the young officer was delivered.
+
+Lord Wellington took up his hat and riding-crop from Sir Terence's
+desk.  "I shall leave for the frontier at once," he announced.
+"Sir Robert will need the encouragement of my presence to keep him
+within the prudent bounds I have imposed.  And I do not know how
+long Ciudad Rodrigo may be able to hold out.  At any moment we may
+have the French upon the Agueda, and the invasion may begin.  As
+for you, O'Moy, this has changed everything.  The French and the
+needs of the case have decided.  For the present no change is
+possible in the administration here in Lisbon.  You hold the
+threads of your office and the moment is not one in which to
+appoint another adjutant to take them over.  Such a thing
+might be fatal to the success of the British arms.  You must
+withdraw this resignation." And he proffered the document.
+
+Sir Terence recoiled.  He went deathly white.
+
+"I cannot," he stammered.  "After what has happened, I - "
+
+Lord Wellington's face became set and stern.  His eyes blazed
+upon the adjutant.
+
+"O'Moy," he said, and the concentrated anger of his voice was
+terrifying, "if you suggest that any considerations but those of
+this campaign have the least weight with me in what I now do, you
+insult me.  I yield to no man in my sense of duty, and I allow no
+private considerations to override it.  You are saved from going
+home in disgrace by the urgency of the circumstances, as I have
+told you.  By that and by nothing else.  Be thankful, then; and
+in loyally remaining at your post efface what is past.  You know
+what is doing at Torres Vedras.  The works have been under your
+direction from the commencement.  See that they are vigorously
+pushed forward and that the lines are ready to receive the army
+in a month's time from now if necessary.  I depend upon you -
+the army and England's honour depend upon you.  I bow to the
+inevitable and so shall you."  Then his sternness relaxed.  "So
+much as your commanding officer.  Now as your friend," and he
+held out his hand, "I congratulate you upon your luck.  After
+this morning's manifestations of it, it should pass into a proverb.
+Goodbye, O'Moy.  I trust you, remember."
+
+"And I shall not fail you," gulped O'Moy, who, strong man that he
+was, found himself almost on the verge of tears.  He clutched the
+extended hand.
+
+"I shall fix my headquarters for the present at Celorico.
+Communicate with me there.  And now one other matter:  the Council
+of Regency will no doubt pester you with representations that I
+should - if time still remains - advance to the relief of Ciudad
+Rodrigo.  Understand, that is no part of my plan of campaign.  I
+do not stir across the frontier of Portugal.  Here let the French
+come and find me, and I shall be ready to receive them.  Let the
+Portuguese Government have no illusions on that point, and
+stimulate the Council into doing all possible to carry out the
+destruction of mills and the laying waste of the country in the
+valley of the Mondego and wherever else I have required.
+
+"Oh, and by the way, you will find your brother-in-law, Mr. Butler,
+in the guard-room yonder, awaiting my orders.  Provide him with a
+uniform and bid him rejoin his regiment at once.  Recommend him
+to be more prudent in future if he wishes me to forget his
+escapade at Tavora.  And in future, O'Moy, trust your wife.  Again,
+good-bye.  Come, Grant! - I have instructions for you too.  But you
+must take them as we ride."
+
+And thus Sir Terence O'Moy found sanctuary at the altar of his
+country's need.  They left him incredulously to marvel at the luck
+which had so enlisted circumstances to save him where all had seemed
+so surely lost an hour ago.
+
+He sent a servant to fetch Mr. Butler, the prime cause of all this
+pother - for all of it can be traced to Mr. Butler's invasion of the
+Tavora nunnery - and with him went to bear the incredible tidings of
+their joint absolution to the three who waited so anxiously in the
+dining-room.
+
+
+
+
+POSTSCRIPTUM
+
+
+The particular story which I have set myself to relate, of how Sir
+Terence O'Moy was taken in the snare of his own jealousy, may very
+properly be concluded here.  But the greater story in which it is
+enshrined and with which it is interwoven, the story of that other
+snare in which my Lord Viscount Wellington took the French, goes
+on.  This story is the history of the war in the Peninsula.  There
+you may pursue it to its very end and realise the iron will and
+inflexibility of purpose which caused men ultimately to bestow upon
+him who guided that campaign the singularly felicitous and fitting
+sobriquet of the Iron Duke.
+
+Ciudad Rodrigo's Spanish garrison capitulated on the 10th of July
+of that year 1810, and a wave of indignation such as must have
+overwhelmed any but a man of almost superhuman mettle swept up
+against Lord Wellington for having stood inactive within the
+frontiers of Portugal and never stirred a hand to aid the Spaniards.
+It was not only from Spain that bitter invective was hurled upon
+him; British journalism poured scorn and rage upon his incompetence,
+French journalism held his pusillanimity up to the ridicule of the
+world.  His own officers took shame in their general, and expressed
+it.  Parliament demanded to know how long British honour was to be
+imperilled by such a man.  And finally the Emperor's great marshal,
+Massena, gathering his hosts to overwhelm the kingdom of Portugal,
+availed himself of all this to appeal to the Portuguese nation in
+terms which the facts would seem to corroborate.
+
+He issued his proclamation denouncing the British for the disturbers
+and mischief-makers of Europe, warning the Portuguese that they were
+the cat's-paw of a perfidious nation that was concerned solely with
+the serving of its own interests and the gratification of its
+predatory ambitions, and finally summoning them to receive the
+French as their true friends and saviours.
+
+The nation stirred uneasily.  So far no good had come to them of
+their alliance with the British.  Indeed Wellington's policy of
+devastation had seemed to those upon whom it fell more horrible
+than any French invasion could have been.
+
+But Wellington held the reins, and his grip never relaxed or
+slackened.  And here let it be recorded that he was nobly and
+stoutly served in Lisbon by Sir Terence O'Moy.  Pressure upon the
+Council resulted in the measures demanded being carried out.  But
+much time had been lost through the intrigues of the Souza faction,
+with the result that those measures, although prosecuted now more
+vigorously, never reached the full extent which Wellington had
+desired.  Treachery, too, stepped in to shorten the time still
+further.  Almeida, garrisoned by Portuguese and commanded by
+Colonel Cox and a British staff, should have held a month.  But
+no sooner had the French appeared before it, on the 26th August,
+than a powder magazine traitorously fired exploded and breached
+the wall, rendering the place untenable.
+
+To Wellington this was perhaps the most vexatious of all things in
+that vexatious time.  He had hoped to detain Massena before Almeida
+until the rains should have set in, when the French would have
+found themselves struggling through a sodden, water-logged country,
+through bridgeless floods and a land bereft of all that could sustain
+the troops.  Still, what could be done Wellington did, and did it
+nobly.  Fighting a rearguard action, he fell back upon the grim and
+naked ridges of Busaco, where at the end of September he delivered
+battle and a murderous detaining wound upon the advancing hosts of
+France.  That done, he continued the retreat through Coimbra.  And
+now as he went he saw to it that the devastation was completed along
+the line of march.  What corn and provisions could not be carried
+off were burnt or buried, and the people forced to quit their
+dwellings and march with the army - a pathetic, southward exodus of
+men and women, old and young, flocks of sheep, and herds of cattle,
+creaking bullock-carts laden with provender and household goods,
+leaving behind them a country bare as the Sahara, where hunger
+before long should grip the French army too far committed now to
+pause.  In advancing and overtaking must lie Massena's hope.
+Eventually in Lisbon he must bring the British to bay, and,
+breaking them, open out at last his way into a land of plenty.
+
+Thus thought Massena, knowing nothing of the lines of Torres Vedras;
+and thus, too, thought the British Government at home, itself
+declaring that Wellington was ruining the country to no purpose,
+since in the end the British must be driven out with terrible loss
+and infamy that must make their name an opprobrium in the world.
+
+But Wellington went his relentless way, and at tire end of the
+first week of October brought his army and the multitude of refugees
+safely within the amazing lines.  The French, pressing hard upon
+their heels and confident that the end was near, were brought up
+sharply before those stupendous, unsuspected, impregnable
+fortifications.
+
+After spending best part of a month in vain reconnoitering, Massena
+took up his quarters at Santarem, and thence the country was
+scoured for what scraps of victuals had been left to relieve the
+dire straits of the famished host of France.  How the great marshal
+contrived to hold out so long in Santarem against the onslaught of
+famine and concomitant disease remains something of a mystery.  An
+appeal to the Emperor for succour eventually brought Drouet with
+provisions, but these were no more than would keep his men alive on a
+retreat into Spain, and that retreat he commenced early in the
+following March, by when no less than ten thousand of his army had
+fallen sick.
+
+Instantly Wellington was up and after him.  The French retreat
+became a flight.  They threw away baggage and ammunition that they
+might travel the lighter.  Thus they fled towards Spain, harassed
+by the British cavalry and scarcely less by the resentful peasantry
+of Portugal, their line of march defined by an unbroken trail of
+carcasses, until the tattered remnants of that once splendid army
+found shelter across the Coira.  Beyond this Wellington could not
+continue the pursuit for lack of means to cross the swollen river
+and also because provisions were running short.
+
+But there for the moment he might rest content, his immediate
+object achieved and his stern strategy supremely vindicated.
+
+On the heights above the yellow, turgid flood rode Wellington
+with a glittering staff that included O'Moy and Murray, the
+quartermaster-general.  Through his telescope he surveyed with
+silent satisfaction the straggling columns of the French that
+were being absorbed by the evening mists from the sodden ground.
+
+O'Moy, at his side, looked on without satisfaction.  To him the
+close of this phase of the campaign which had justified his
+remaining in office meant the reopening of that painful matter
+that had been left in suspense by circumstances since that June
+day of last year at Monsanto.  The resignation then refused from
+motives of expediency must again be tendered and must now be
+accepted.
+
+Abruptly upon the general stillness came a sharply humming sound.
+Within a yard of the spot where Wellington sat his horse a
+handful of soil heaved itself up and fell in a tiny scattered shower.
+Immediately elsewhere in a dozen places was the phenomenon
+repeated.  There was too much glitter about the staff uniforms and
+vindictive French sharpshooters were finding them an attractive mark.
+
+"They are firing on us, sir!" cried O'Moy on a note of sharp alarm.
+
+"So I perceive," Lord Wellington answered calmly, and leisurely he
+closed his glass, so leisurely that O'Moy, in impatient fear of his
+chief, spurred forward and placed himself as a screen between him
+and the line of fire.
+
+Lord Wellington looked at him with a faint smile.  He was about to
+speak when O'Moy pitched forward and rolled headlong from the saddle.
+
+They picked him up unconscious but alive, and for once Lord
+Wellington was seen to blench as he flung down from his horse to
+inquire the nature of O'Moy's hurt.  It was not fatal, but, as it
+afterwards proved, it was grave enough.  He had been shot through
+the body, the right lung had been grazed and one of his ribs broken.
+
+Two days later, after the bullet had been extracted, Lord
+Wellington went to visit him in the house where he was quartered.
+Bending over him and speaking quietly, his lordship said that which
+brought a moisture to the eyes of Sir Terence and a smile to his
+pale lips.  What actually were his lordship's words may be gathered
+from the answer he received.
+
+"Ye're entirely wrong, then, and it's mighty glad I am.  For now
+I need no longer hand you my resignation.  I can be invalided home."
+
+So he was; and thus it happens that not until now - when this
+chronicle makes the matter public - does the knowledge of Sir
+Terence's single but grievous departure from the path of honour go
+beyond the few who were immediately concerned with it.  They kept
+faith with him because they loved him; and because they had
+understood all that went to the making of his sin, they condoned it.
+
+If I have done my duty as a faithful chronicler, you who read,
+understanding too, will take satisfaction in that it was so.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Snare, by Rafael Sabatini
+
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