United States or Bolivia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Sylvia, who to Lady O'Moy's exasperation seemed now for the first time to give a thought to what she should wear that night, went off in haste to gown herself, and so Lady O'Moy was left to her own resources which I assure you were few indeed. The evening being calm and warm, she sauntered out into the open.
For the sake of the young wife whom he loved with a passionate and fearful jealousy such as is not uncommon in a man of O'Moy's temperament when at his age he was approaching his forty-sixth birthday he marries a girl of half his years, the adjutant had pulled his brother-in-law out of many a difficulty; shielded him on many an occasion from the proper consequences of his incurable rashness.
I wonder would you have been so ready to make a shield of your honour could you have known what you were really shielding?" "Ned!" she cried. "Why don't you speak? Is he to go on in this fashion? Of what is he accusing you? If you were not with Samoval that night, where were you?" "In a lady's room, as you correctly informed the court," came O'Moy's bitter mockery.
It was thus in all things, for these cousins represented the two poles of womanhood. Miss Armytage without any of Lady O'Moy's insistent and excessive femininity, was nevertheless feminine to the core. But hers was the Diana type of womanliness.
There was his duty as commander-in-chief, and there was his friendship for O'Moy and his memory of the past in which O'Moy's loyalty had almost been the ruin of him. "What choice have I?" His lordship turned away, and strode the length of the room, his head bent, his lips twitching. Suddenly he stopped and faced the silent intelligence officer. "What is to be done, Grant?"
"That may account for it," her ladyship confessed, and fell for a moment into consideration of that delicious and rather amusing past, when O'Moy's ferocious hesitancy and flaming jealousy had delighted her with the full perception of her beauty's power. With a rush, however, the present forced itself back upon her notice.
The Count had been deeply shocked by the discover that Dick Butler was Lady O'Moy's brother, and a little confused that he himself in his ignorance should have been the means of bringing to her knowledge a painful matter that touched her so closely and that hitherto had been so carefully concealed from her by her husband.
Tremayne's glance considered the court and met the concerned and grave regard of his colonel, of his friend Carruthers and of two other friends of his own regiment, the cold indifference of three officers of the Fourteenth then stationed in Lisbon with whom he was unacquainted, and the utter inscrutability of O'Moy's rather lowering glance, which profoundly intrigued him, and, lastly, the official hostility of Major Swan, who was on his feet setting forth the case against him.
The groan attracted the attention of his military secretary, Captain Tremayne, of Fletcher's Engineers, who sat at work at a littered writing-table placed in the window recess. He looked up sharply, sudden concern in the strong young face and the steady grey eyes he bent upon his chief. The sight of O'Moy's hunched attitude brought him instantly to his feet. "Whatever is the matter, sir?"
Sure it's a great success that fellow should be in paradise. Did ye remark the way she melted to him beauty swooning at the sight of temptation! Bad luck to him! Who is he at all?" They dispersed laughing and followed by O'Moy's scowling eyes. It annoyed him that his wife's thoughtless conduct should render her the butt of such jests as these, and perhaps a subject for lewd gossip.
Word Of The Day