“Perhaps so,” said the unabashed Samoval. “But if I were Sir Terence I should desire above all to allay my wife’s natural anxiety. For I am sure you must be anxious, dear Lady O’Moy.”’
“Naturally,” she agreed, whose anxieties never transcended the fit of her gowns or the suitability of a coiffure. “But Terence is like that.”
“Incredible!” the Count protested, and raised his dark eyes to heaven as if invoking its punishment upon so unnatural a husband. “Do you tell me that you have never so much as seen the plans of these fortifications?”
“The plans, Count!” She almost laughed.
“Ah!” he said. “I dare swear then that you do not even know of their existence.” He was jocular now.
“I am sure that she does not,” said Sylvia, who instinctively felt that the conversation was following an undesirable course.
“Then you are wrong,” she was assured. “I saw them once, a week ago, in Sir Terence’s room.”
“Why, how would you know them if you saw them?” quoth Sylvia, seeking to cover what might be an indiscretion.
“Because they bore the name: ‘Lines of Torres Vedras.’ I remember.”
“And this unsympathetic Sir Terence did not explain them to you?” laughed Samoval.