ee, but it makes very little odds to
us.

CHAPTER XLIII.

PEACE AND LOVE.

"And many a dim o'erarching grove,
And many a flat and sunny cove;
And terraced lawns, whose bright cascades
The honeysuckle sweetly shades;
And rocks whose very crags seem bowers,
So gay they are with grass and flowers."

It was a delightful breakfast with the merry party at Escondido as they
sat under the wide, cool piazza in the shade, with the sun throwing his
slanting rays through the vines and clusters of purple grapes, and
through the orange-trees, where the yellow fruit was fast losing its
fragrant dew--all the men once more in summer rig, and the ladies in
flowing muslin and tidy caps.

"My dear," said Piron to his wife, "we have lost one of our guests,
Colonel Lawton; he went away at daylight this morning, and left a
message to me, and compliments to you all, that business of importance,
which he had forgotten, demanded his immediate return to Kingston."

There was no sorrow expressed by the lady or her fair sister, and even
the men treated it with indifference, except Mr. Burns, who remarked, as
he snapped a tooth-pick in twain, that, for his part, he was glad the
fellow had gone; he didn't like his looks at all, though he did make
himself so fascinating to the beautiful widow who sat next him.

"Ah! Monsieur Burns, think you I would prefer a scarlet coat when--"

"You might get a blue!" broke in Paddy, with a comical twinkle of his
eye, as he winked in the direction of Commodore Cleveland, who sat
opposite.

"No, no," exclaimed the pretty widow, hastily, as she shook her finger
at her despairing admirer, "that is not what I was going to say--when
those red coats there from England killed my poor husband at Quatre
Bras."

"Ah! yes, my dear--bad luck to them! But an Irishman would never have
been so cruel, you know, though, 'pon me sowl," went on Paddy, as he
stuck a fork in an orange and began to divest it of its peel, West
India fashion, to present it to the matron beside him, "I fear I should
like to kill any man who loved ye, Madame Nathalie, myself."

"What a droll man you are, Monsieur Burns," replied the widow, laughing
outright, "when you know you would prefer a jug of Antigua punch, any
day, to me. Stop, now! didn't you say, at your grand dinner in Kingston,
that you would never allow a woman to darken your doors?"

"I--a meant--a black woman, my dear; as true as me name's Paddy