The adjutant paused in the act of unfolding his napkin. The prepared explanation trembled on his lips; but its falsehood, repellent to him, was not uttered.
“I should certainly do so, my dear,” was all he said, and addressed himself to his breakfast.
“What news from headquarters?” Miss Armytage asked him. “Are things going well?”
“Much better now that Principal Souza’s influence is at an end. Cotton reports that the destruction of the mills in the Mondego valley is being carried out systematically.”
Miss Armytage’s dark, thoughtful eyes became wistful.
“Do you know, Terence,” she said, “that I am not without some sympathy for the Portuguese resistance to Lord Wellington’s decrees. They must bear so terribly hard upon the people. To be compelled with their own hands to destroy their homes and lay waste the lands upon which they have laboured—what could be more cruel?”
“War can never be anything but cruel,” he answered gravely. “God help the people over whose lands it sweeps. Devastation is often the least of the horrors marching in its train.”
“Why must war be?” she asked him, in intelligent rebellion against that most monstrous and infamous of all human madnesses.
O’Moy proceeded to do his best to explain the unexplainable, and since, himself a professional soldier, he could not take the sane view of his sane young questioner, hot argument ensued between them, to the infinite weariness of Lady O’Moy, who out of self-protection gave herself to the study of the latest fashion plates from London and the consideration of a gown for the ball which the Count of Redondo was giving in the following week.
It was thus in all things, for these cousins represented the two poles of womanhood. Miss Armytage without any of Lady O’Moy’s insistent and excessive femininity, was nevertheless feminine to the core. But hers was the Diana type of womanliness. She was tall and of a clean-limbed, supple grace, now emphasised by the riding-habit which she was wearing—for she had been in the saddle during the hour which Lady O’Moy had consecrated to the rites of toilet and devotions done before her mirror. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, vivacity and intelligence lent her countenance an attraction very different from the allurement of her cousin’s delicate loveliness. And because her countenance was a true mirror of her mind, she argued shrewdly now, so shrewdly that she drove O’Moy to entrench himself behind generalisations.