'full-uddered kine.' He liked them parched and lithe with eyes like
smouldering fires--"

"Ah, like Patsy!" said the Duke, not yet cured of his love-sickness.

"Exactly," countered my Lord, "like Miss Patsy to a hair. Well, when we
went into his tent the next morning--Murat had excused him
service--he--well, he was not pretty to see. To begin with, his throat
was cut and the girl nowhere to be seen. Yet I could be sworn I tied her
wrists tightly enough. One look at Southwald spoilt more breakfasts than
mine that day, and Murat himself, who did not stick at trifles, brought
all his available officers, a whole camp of them, and made poor
Southwald the text for a little discourse. No, Murat did not say
anything, he only pointed, but my cousin made a better homily and
application than parson ever preached."

"And pray what were either of you doing in Apulia with the
brother-in-law of Buonaparte?" cried the Duke, who compounded for the
sin of private cowardice by excessive public patriotism.

"You were at Vienna at the time, and ought to remember," said my Lord,
quite calmly. "Murat was keen to emancipate himself from the yoke of the
Emperor, and was playing for his own hand. Southwald and I had been sent
informally from Malta to Naples to discover what lengths he was prepared
to go."

"Nonsense, Wargrove, I know better," the Duke exclaimed. "That was not
your real reason."

"It was that which was marked on our passports and safe-conducts. But"
(here he yawned courteously behind his hand) "perhaps your Highness has
remarked that though the Buonapartes are doubtless all great rascals,
their female kind have a habit of being deucedly pretty and
liberal-minded women!"

"But why then did your cousin mix himself up with little blackamoors?"

"_Chacun a son gout!_" said Wargrove, lightly. "I always knew that my
taste in women was better than Southies. So he got what I tell you, and
I"--(he fingered at a ribbon), "I got the Order of the Golden
Fleece--Murat's own, which he had brought from Madrid after the Dos de
Mayo. Murat was pleased with me. I read the burial service over
Southwald out of a prayer-book his mother had written his name in, with
Murat and his Frenchmen standing round with bared heads like gentlemen,
though they could never have seen a priest before in a Guards' uniform."

"And the girl?" demanded the Duke. "Of course she was sought for and
punished?"

Wargrove sighed long and then paused to give his w