In itself this was enough to trouble a man
in O'Moy's position. But there was more. Lieutenant Butler happened
to be his brother-in-law, own brother to O'Moy's lovely, frivolous
wife. Irresponsibility ran strongly in that branch of the Butler
family.
For the sake of the young wife whom he loved with a passionate and
fearful jealousy such as is not uncommon in a man of O'Moy's
temperament when at his age - he was approaching his forty-sixth
birthday - he marries a girl of half his years, the adjutant had
pulled his brother-in-law out of many a difficulty; shielded him on
many an occasion from the proper consequences of his incurable
rashness.
This affair of the convent, however, transcended anything that had
gone before and proved altogether too much for O'Moy. It angered
him as much as it afflicted him. Yet when he took his head in his
hands and groaned, it was only his sorrow that he was expressing,
and it was a sorrow entirely concerned with his wife.
The groan attracted the attention of his military secretary, Captain
Tremayne, of Fletcher's Engineers, who sat at work at a littered
writing-table placed in the window recess. He looked up sharply,
sudden concern in the strong young face and the steady grey eyes he
bent upon his chief.
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