tail (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