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 The members of the household had withdrawn over an hour ago and were asleep by now.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.
“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 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.”
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 sank 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 she 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 time, 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.