“You tempt me, sir,” she said, with a wistful smile.
“Then yield to the temptation, child,” he urged her kindly, those keen, penetrating eyes of his perceiving trouble here.
“It isn’t for myself,” she responded. “Yet there is something I would ask you if I dare—something I had intended to ask you in any case if I could find the opportunity. To be frank, that is why I was waiting there in the garden just now. It was to waylay you. I hoped for a word with you.”
“Well, well,” he encouraged her. “It should be the easier now, since in a sense we find that we are old friends.”
He was so kind, so gentle, despite that stern, strong face of his, that she melted at once to his persuasion.
“It is about Lieutenant Richard Butler,” she began.
“Ah,” said he lightly, “I feared as much when you said it was not for yourself you had a favour to ask.”
But, looking at him, she instantly perceived how he had misunderstood her.
“Mr. Butler,” she said, “is the officer who was guilty of the affair at Tavora.”
He knit his brow in thought. “Butler-Tavora?” he muttered questioningly. Suddenly his memory found what it was seeking. “Oh yes, the violated nunnery.” His thin lips tightened; the sternness of his ace increased. “Yes?” he inquired, but the tone was now forbidding.