“I feel no need of appealing to the cool reflecting morning hours.”

“Of course you do not feel it now; that, too, will come with the sober morning.”

L’Isle, a good deal nettled, was about to reply, when she exclaimed, “Why, you have been smoking!”

“No, I have only been smoked.”

“That is just as unpleasant,” she said, pushing her chair farther off.  “The Portuguese snuff-taking is offensive enough, but this Spanish habit of smoking perpetually is intolerable.  Wherever our officers go they pick up the small vices of the country, without abandoning any of their own.  Here they add smoking to their native wine-bibbing propensities.  They spoil a man utterly.”

“Not utterly,” said L’Isle; “there is Warren now, a capital fellow, a delightful companion, and an inveterate smoker.”

“For that I cannot abide him,” said Lady Mabel, out of humor with everybody.

“There is your friend, Colonel Bradshawe, who sets no little store by his wine and cigar.”

“He is intolerable with them, and would be a bore without them.”

“But my Lord himself smokes.  Will you not tolerate him?”

“He is an old man, a general officer, and my father,” said Lady Mabel.  “After a life of hard service in the worst climates in the world, he may need indulgences not necessary to younger men.  Besides, he is obliged to see so much of his officers.  If he could choose his companions, he would lead a very different life.  When we happen to be alone here,” continued Lady Mabel, “he never sits long after dinner, seldom touches a cigar, and it is evidently only his position, and the habits forced upon him in a long military career, which interfere with his quiet tastes and love of domestic life.”

L’Isle looked at Lady Mabel to see if she was in earnest.  She had only said what she willingly believed on rather slight foundations.  In truth, the novelty of having his daughter with him on the few occasions on which they were here left alone together, had proved of quite sufficient interest to enable Lord Strathern to dispense with other society and excitements, and led him to look back and to speak much of his short married life, and far beyond that, the days of his boyhood.  L’Isle found himself convicted of contributing, with others, to mar the comfort and spoil the habits of the most abstemious and domestic old gentleman in the king’s service.  This was plainly a point on which it was not safe to contradict Lady Mabel, if he would keep in her good graces—­so he gladly waved the discussion.

Mrs. Shortridge, under the reviving influence of her love of sight-seeing, now asked L’Isle to suggest some excursion for them, on which they might see something new.  But she begged that it might be within a reasonable distance, for she had been so thoroughly shaken on the rough paths to and from Evora, that she was not yet up to another long ride.

“Cranfield has just been talking of Fort la Lippe,” said L’Isle, “which overlooks us from the North.  Let us make up a party to visit it to-morrow.  Cranfield can entertain and instruct us by discoursing on this masterpiece of the Count de Lippe, and unveil the mysteries of the engineer’s art.  In the intervals, we can, from that high point, survey the country around us.”