table at
every meal, taking that, as well as other opportunities, to inculcate
rigid precept and sound doctrine on military matters, and lecture his
officers on the subject of discipline. Nor did he confine himself to
generalities. He was exacting with his major, hard on his adjutant; he
gave Captain A---- to understand that the days and nights spent in the
mountains in pursuit of his game tended little to promote the King's
service, and that leave would be refused in future, and he suggested
to Captain B---- that the best way to ascertain the state of his
company was not to send for his orderly sergeant, but to inspect it
himself. He spoiled more than one party of pleasure for some of these
gentlemen by finding very inopportunely something else for them to do
than following the ladies of Elvas and other game of the vicinage.

Many of the officers grumbled, and voted the colonel a bore. They even
talked of sending him to Coventry. But Adjutant Meynell excused him by
whispering it about that the colonel had just met with a rude rebuff
from a certain person at headquarters, and as the rank and sex of the
offender hindered his showing his resentment in that direction, on
whom could he vent his ill-humor but on those under his command?
Meynell advised that they should all unite in sending a round robbin
to Lady Mabel, begging her to smile upon their colonel, and put him in
an amiable mood.

With the little festive skirmishes, of almost daily occurrences at
headquarters, Lord Strathern loved to mingle occasionally more serious
affairs, in the shape of grander feasts; and on the fourth day after
Lady Mabel's return, the guests assembled in force. Among them were
three ladies of Elvas, who had established a social intercourse with
Lady Mabel, and a greater, though less ostensible intimacy with some
gentlemen of the brigade. Dinner company is a phase of social life
almost unknown in Portugal, and Lady Mabel, aware of this, was
needlessly anxious to put her female guests at their ease. Her
smattering of their tongue proved inadequate, and even her Spanish but
poorly served the purposes of conversation. Dona Carlotta Sequiera,
indeed, despising the peninsular tongues, would speak only French--but
such French! She had picked up most of it along Kellerman's officers,
when he held Elvas with a French garrison in 1808. This lady, like
some other renegade Portuguese, at that time assiduously courted the
Gaul; and she was anxious now