“Alas! anything from three to five to one. Ah, but why should we despond on that account?” And his voice vibrated with renewed confidence. “The country is a difficult one, easy to defend, and Lord Wellington’s genius will have made the best of it. There are, for example, the fortifications at Torres Vedras.” “Ah yes! I have heard of them. Tell me about them, Count.” “Tell you about them, dear lady? Shall I carry perfumes to the rose? What can I tell you that you do not know so much better than myself?” “Indeed, I know nothing. Sir Terence is ridiculously secretive,” she assured him, with a little frown of petulance. She realised that her husband did not treat her as an intelligent being to be consulted upon these matters. She was his wife, and he had no right to keep secrets from her. In fact she said so. “Indeed no,” Samoval agreed. “And I find it hard to credit that it should be so.” “Then you forget,” said Sylvia, “that these secrets are not Sir Terence’s own. They are the secrets of his office.” “Perhaps so,” said the unabashed Samoval. “But if I were Sir Terence I should desire above all to allay my wife’s natural anxiety. For I am sure you must be anxious, dear Lady O’Moy.”’ “Naturally,” she agreed, whose anxieties never transcended the fit of her gowns or the suitability of a coiffure. “But Terence is like that.” “Incredible!” the Count protested, and raised his dark eyes to heaven as if invoking its punishment upon so unnatural a husband. “Do you tell me that you have never so much as seen the plans of these fortifications?” “The plans, Count!” She almost laughed. “Ah!” he said. “I dare swear then that you do not even know of their existence.” He was jocular now. “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?”