‘How were you wounded?’ he asked.
‘I was stabbed in the back on the Toledo road, ten miles from here.’
‘Not by a robber—not for your money?’
‘No one ever hated me or cared for me on that account,’ laughed Conyngham.
‘Then who did it?’ asked General Vincente, unbuttoning his gloves.
Conyngham hesitated.
‘A man with whom I quarrelled on the road,’ he made reply; but it was no answer at all, as hearers and speaker alike recognised in a flash of thought.
‘He left me for dead on the road, but a carter picked me up and brought me to Madrid, to the hospital of the Hermanas, where I have been ever since.’
There were flowers on the table, and the General stooped over them with a delicate appreciation of their scent. He was a great lover of flowers, and indeed had a sense of the beautiful quite out of keeping with the colour of his coat.
‘You must beware,’ he said, ‘now that you wear the Queen’s uniform. There is treachery abroad, I fear. Even I have had an anonymous letter of warning.’