“What are you going to do, sir?” he inquired. Sir Terence shrugged impatiently and heaved himself up in his chair. “Nothing,” he growled. “Nothing?” The interrogation, which seemed almost to cover a reproach, irritated the adjutant. “And what the devil can I do?” he rapped. “You’ve pulled Dick out of scrapes before now.” “I have. That seems to have been my principal occupation ever since I married his sister. But this time he’s gone too far. What can I do?” “Lord Wellington is fond of you,” suggested Captain Tremayne. He was your imperturbable young man, and he remained as calm now as O’Moy was excited. Although by some twenty years the adjutant’s junior, there was between O’Moy and himself, as well as between Tremayne and the Butler family, with which he was remotely connected, a strong friendship, which was largely responsible for the captain’s present appointment as Sir Terence’s military secretary. O’Moy looked at him, and looked away. “Yes,” he agreed. “But he’s still fonder of law and order and military discipline, and I should only be imperilling our friendship by pleading with him for this young blackguard.” “The young blackguard is your brother-in-law,” Tremayne reminded him. “Bad luck to you, Tremayne, don’t I know it? Besides, what is there I can do?” he asked again, and ended testily: “Faith, man, I don’t know what you’re thinking of.” “I’m thinking of Una,” said Captain Tremayne in that composed way of his, and the words fell like cold water upon the hot iron of O’Moy’s anger. The man who can receive with patience a reproach, implicit or explicit, of being wanting in consideration towards his wife is comparatively rare, and never a man of O’Moy’s temperament and circumstances. Tremayne’s reminder stung him sharply, and the more sharply because of the strong friendship that existed between Tremayne and Lady O’Moy. That friendship had in the past been a thorn in O’Moy’s flesh. In the days of his courtship he had known a fierce jealousy of Tremayne, beholding in him for a time a rival who, with the strong advantage of youth, must in the end prevail. But when O’Moy, putting his fortunes to the test, had declared himself and been accepted by Una Butler, there had been an end to the jealousy, and the old relations of cordial friendship between the men had been resumed. O’Moy had conceived that jealousy of his to have been slain. But there had been times when from its faint, uneasy stirrings he should have taken warning that it did no more than slumber. Like most warm hearted, generous, big-natured men, O’Moy was of a singular humility where women were concerned, and this humility of his would often breathe a doubt lest in choosing between himself and Tremayne Una might have been guided by her head rather than her heart, by ambition rather than affection, and that in taking himself she had taken the man who could give her by far the more assured and affluent position.