no longer take the field, because all the world is tired
of fighting, and yet more of paying the bills run up in that expensive
diversion, he will write the narrative of the campaigns in which he
had taken part, without letting the '_quorum pars magna fui_' fill too
large a place in the picture.--Where can he find so much of the
materials needed in the construction of his work as in London? So to
London he went.

The season was at its height, and the town was full. L'Isle's object
required that he should not only examine many musty papers, but see
many persons; as some of his gayer friends soon found him out, and
induced him to look in upon the inner circles of London fashionable
life, to which his early and long absence from England had kept him a
stranger.

It so happened that Lord Strathern had come up from his moors, where
the winter had got too cold for him (the climate had changed much
since he was a boy), to visit the clubs and meet old comrades. But
these proved too much for the old veteran, who soon had to shut
himself up, in order to stave off an attack of his old enemy, the
gout. He would not, however, permit Lady Mabel to stand the siege with
him. The consequence was, that not long after L'Isle had come up to
London, he found himself in one of Lady D----'s thronged rooms, within
four steps of Lady Mabel.

In three years she had become, if we may be pardoned the bull, more
like herself than ever, for she was now all that she had promised to
be. She shone out in a richer and riper beauty, and a more sedate and
womanly deportment set it off, retaining not the least trace of that
somewhat cavalier manner she had picked up in the brigade. She was
more than three years wiser, and certainly more dangerous than ever.

L'Isle had long and studiously schooled himself to the conviction that
his fair and fascinating companion in Elvas was, after all, but a
heartless woman. Yet his vanity, to say nothing of any other feeling,
had never quite gotten over the rude shock it had received on Mrs.
Shortridge's great night there. His first thought was to withdraw from
the dangerous neighborhood. But he blushed at his own cowardice; and
the moment after, having caught her eye, he, self-confident, made his
way through the crowd, and greeted her politely as an old
acquaintance. It was plain that she was a little nervous on his
approach; her lips were compressed for a moment, and she drew more
than one deep breath, while watc