On the dining-room sideboard, from the remains of dinner, she found and furtively abstracted what she needed--best part of a roast chicken, a small loaf and a half-flask of Collares. Mullins, the butler, would no doubt be exercised presently when he discovered the abstraction. Let him blame one of the footmen, Sir Terence’s orderly, or the cat. It mattered nothing to Lady O’Moy. Having devoured the food and consumed the wine, Richard’s exhaustion assumed the form of a lethargic torpor. To sleep was now his overmastering desire. She fetched him rugs and pillows, and he made himself a couch upon the floor. She had demurred, of course, when he himself had suggested this. She could not conceive of any one sleeping anywhere but in a bed. But Dick made short work of that illusion. “Haven’t I been in hiding for the last six weeks?” he asked her. “And haven’t I been thankful to sleep in a ditch? And wasn’t I campaigning before that? I tell you I couldn’t sleep in a bed. It’s a habit I’ve lost entirely.” Convinced, she gave way. “We’ll talk to-morrow, Una,” he promised her, as he stretched himself luxuriously upon that hard couch. “But meanwhile, on your life, not a word to any one. You understand?” “Of course I understand, my poor Dick.” She stooped to kiss him. But he was fast asleep already. She went out and locked the door, and when, on the point of setting out for Count Redondo’s, she returned the bunch of keys to Bridget the key of the alcove was missing. “I shall require it again in the morning, Bridget,” she explained lightly. And then added kindly, as it seemed: “Don’t wait for me, child. Get to bed. I shall be late in coming home, and I shall not want you.” CHAPTER VI. MISS ARMYTAGE’S PEARLS Lady O’Moy and Miss Armytage drove alone together into Lisbon. The adjutant, still occupied, would follow as soon as he possibly could, whilst Captain Tremayne would go on directly from the lodgings which he shared in Alcantara with Major Carruthers--also of the adjutant’s staff--whither he had ridden to dress some twenty minutes earlier. “Are you ill, Una?” had been Sylvia’s concerned greeting of her cousin when she came within the range of the carriage lamps. “You are pale as a ghost.” To this her ladyship had replied mechanically that a slight headache troubled her. But now that they sat side by side in the well upholstered carriage Miss Armytage became aware that her companion was trembling. “Una, dear, whatever is the matter?” Had it not been for the dominant fear that the shedding of tears would render her countenance unsightly, Lady O’Moy would have yielded to her feelings and wept. Heroically in the cause of her own flawless beauty she conquered the almost overmastering inclination. “I--I have been so troubled about Richard,” she faltered. “It is preying upon my mind.” “Poor dear!” In sheer motherliness Miss Armytage put an arm about her cousin and drew her close. “We must hope for the best.”