“Have you ever heard,” quoth a heavy dragoon, who was also a heavy jester, “that in heaven the last shall be first? If you pay court to an angel you must submit to celestial customs.”
“And bedad,” rejoined the infantryman, “as there’s no marryin’ in heaven ye’ve got to make the best of it with other men’s wives. Sure it’s a great success that fellow should be in paradise. Did ye remark the way she melted to him beauty swooning at the sight of temptation! Bad luck to him! Who is he at all?”
They dispersed laughing and followed by O’Moy’s scowling eyes. It annoyed him that his wife’s thoughtless conduct should render her the butt of such jests as these, and perhaps a subject for lewd gossip. He would speak to her about it later. Meanwhile the marshal had linked arms with him.
“Since the privilege must be postponed,” said he, “suppose that we seek supper. I have always found that a man can best heal in his stomach the wounds taken by his heart.” His fleshy bulk afforded a certain prima-facie confirmation of the dictum.
With a roll more suggestive of the quarter-deck than the saddle, the great man bore off O’Moy in quest of material consolation. Yet as they went the adjutant’s eyes raked the ballroom in quest of his wife. That quest, however, was unsuccessful, for his wife was already in the garden.
“I want to talk to you most urgently, Ned. Take me somewhere where we can be quite private,” she had begged the captain. “Somewhere where there is no danger of being overheard.”
Her agitation, now uncontrolled, suggested to Tremayne that the matter might be far more serious and urgent than Miss Armytage had represented it. He thought first of the balcony where he had lately been. But then the balcony opened immediately from the ante-room and was likely at any moment to be invaded. So, since the night was soft and warm, he preferred the garden. Her ladyship went to find a wrap, then arm in arm they passed out, and were lost in the shadows of an avenue of palm-trees.
“It is about Dick,” she said breathlessly.
“I know—Miss Armytage told me.”
“What did she tell you?”