On the dining-room sideboard, from the remains of dinner, she found and furtively abstracted what she needed—best part of a roast chicken, a small loaf and a half-flask of Collares. Mullins, the butler, would no doubt be exercised presently when he discovered the abstraction. Let him blame one of the footmen, Sir Terence’s orderly, or the cat. It mattered nothing to Lady O’Moy.
Having devoured the food and consumed the wine, Richard’s exhaustion assumed the form of a lethargic torpor. To sleep was now his overmastering desire. She fetched him rugs and pillows, and he made himself a couch upon the floor. She had demurred, of course, when he himself had suggested this. She could not conceive of any one sleeping anywhere but in a bed. But Dick made short work of that illusion.
“Haven’t I been in hiding for the last six weeks?” he asked her. “And haven’t I been thankful to sleep in a ditch? And wasn’t I campaigning before that? I tell you I couldn’t sleep in a bed. It’s a habit I’ve lost entirely.”
Convinced, she gave way.
“We’ll talk to-morrow, Una,” he promised her, as he stretched himself luxuriously upon that hard couch. “But meanwhile, on your life, not a word to any one. You understand?”
“Of course I understand, my poor Dick.”
She stooped to kiss him. But he was fast asleep already.
She went out and locked the door, and when, on the point of setting out for Count Redondo’s, she returned the bunch of keys to Bridget the key of the alcove was missing.
“I shall require it again in the morning, Bridget,” she explained lightly. And then added kindly, as it seemed: “Don’t wait for me, child. Get to bed. I shall be late in coming home, and I shall not want you.”