lonel emptied the decanter by filling the
glasses all round, and each man emptying his glass, the company
dispersed.

CHAPTER V.

I praise God for you, sir: your reasons at dinner have been sharp
and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without
affectation, audacious without impudence, learned without opinion,
and strange without heresy.--_Love's Labor Lost_.

L'Isle, meanwhile, after spending an unwonted time at his toilet, drew
himself up to the utmost of the five feet ten which nature had
allotted to him, to shake off the stoop which he imagined himself to
have contracted during his long hours of languor and suffering. He
then inspected himself most critically in the glass, to see how far he
had recovered his usual good looks. But that truthful counsellor
presented to him cheeks still sunken and pallid, and sharpened
features. The clear gray eye looked out from a cavern, and the rich
nut-brown hair hung over a brow covered with parchment. His lean
figure no longer filled the uniform which once fitted it so well. He
stood before his glass in no peacock mood of self-admiration; but was
compelled to own that he was not, just now at least, the man to
fascinate a lady's eye; so he resolved to take Lady Mabel by the ear,
which is, in fact, the surest way to catch a woman.

Lord Strathern kept his promise: to have no noisy fellows at dinner
to-day. Perhaps an occasional visitor, who hovered near, the gout,
made him more readily dispense with his more jovial companions. The
only guest, beside L'Isle, was Major Conway, of the light dragoons.

A party of four is an excellent number for conversation, especially if
there be no rivalry among them. The major had served long in India,
but had arrived in the Peninsula only toward the end of the last
campaign. He wished to learn all he could of the country, the people
and the war; and nearly five years of close observation, industrious
inquiry, and active service had rendered L'Isle just the man to
gratify his wishes. Lord Strathern, too, in a long and varied military
career, had seen much, and the old soldier had not failed to lay in a
stock of shrewd observation and amusing anecdote. So that, to a young
listener like Lady Mabel, eager to learn and quick to appreciate, two
or three hours glided away in striking and agreeable contrast with the
more jovial and somewhat noisy festivities of yesterday and many a
previous day. L'Isle made no attempt t