“How came such a mistake to be made?” he inquired, a scowl upon his full red countenance.
Mr. O’Rourke had been investigating and was primed with knowledge.
“It appears, sir, that at Tavora there is a convent of Dominican nuns as well as a monastery of Dominican friars. Mr. Butler will have used the word ‘convento,’ which more particularly applies to the nunnery, and so he was directed to the wrong house.”
“And you say the sergeant has reason to believe that Mr. Butler did not survive his folly?”
“I am afraid there can be no hope, sir.”
“It’s perhaps just as well,” said Sir Robert. “For Lord Wellington would certainly have had him shot.”
And there you have the true account of the stupid affair of Tavora, which was to produce, as we shall see, such far-reaching effects upon persons nowise concerned in it.
CHAPTER II. THE ULTIMATUM
News of the affair at Tavora reached Sir Terence O’Moy, the Adjutant-General at Lisbon, about a week later in dispatches from headquarters. These informed him that in the course of the humble apology and explanation of the regrettable occurrence offered by the Colonel of the 8th Dragoons in person to the Mother Abbess, it had transpired that Lieutenant Butler had left the convent alive, but that nevertheless he continued absent from his regiment.