第41章 CHAPTER X(3)

"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."