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.