ncreased.
"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 h