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 g