It would have been well had the discussion stopped here.  In the heat of debate each pushed his argument beyond his own convictions.  Colonel Bradshawe sat sipping his wine, listening with mock gravity and seeming to oscillate between the opinions of the disputants, but most of the company agreed with Lord Strathern; still L’Isle found several staunch backers for his mechanical theory.  But when quoting facts in support of his views, he referred to the conduct of their own men on sundry late occasions, and stated the result of the inquiries he that morning had made into the last outrage, he brought the whole company down upon him.  They were all sure that the English soldiers had nothing to do with it.  His lordship professed to detect, not only in the act itself, but in the modus operandi, infallible marks that fathered it on the Spaniard.  The quiet, stealthy manner, the place, just on the border, yet out of Spain.  “Besides,” he urged, “you yourself say, that the few words the marauders were heard to utter were all Spanish.”

“But the same testimony proves them to have been bad Spanish, even to the ears of a Portuguese borderer, and evidently used by foreigners for the purpose of disguise, like the dresses they wore.  Who ever heard of a Spaniard breaking a man’s head, when he could give him the blade of his knife?  The farmer’s bloody crown was a plain piece of English handicraft.  Spaniards would have rummaged the house for la plata, and have snatched the earrings from the women’s ears; the robbers, a more thirsty race, thought chiefly of carrying off the liquor.”

The number and loud voices of those opposed to him only made L’Isle more stubborn in maintaining his views.  He seemed rather to like being in a minority of one.  On the other hand, Lord Strathern construed his remarks into an undisguised censure of his lax discipline.  Luckily he was a truly hospitable man:  nowhere, but at his own board, could he have kept his temper under control.  Between the fumes of wine and smoke of cigars, the matter only became more and more cloudy.  It was late when L’Isle left the table and entered the drawing-room, with a brow still ruffled by the controversy.

Striving to resume his equanimity, he took a seat by Lady Mabel.  But she, by no means pleased at the long absence of her interpreter, and his late neglect in attending on her, pushed her chair back, and said something about “falling into bad habits.”

“Do you think so?” said L’Isle, looking surprised, then reflecting a moment.  “Why, Lady Mabel, I am not aware of having committed any excess, at least of the kind you suspect.”

“Why, then, do you come from below so much heated and excited?”

“I have been engaged in a hot argument with my Lord, and others.”

“Coolness would be more appropriate to argument than heat.  But this was plainly an after-dinner discussion.  The subject should be handled a second time, in imitation of those wise barbarians, who resolved on nothing until they had twice taken counsel, once of their cups, and then of cool sobriety the morning after.”