“There are some things,” answered L’Isle, but in a softened tone, “not to be forgotten, nor easily forgiven.”

“I assure you,” said Lady Mabel, with the air of a penitent, “I have been terribly ashamed of myself ever since.  Had I known that you still viewed my thoughtless conduct as a serious wrong to you, I would willingly have made you any apology, any reparation.”

“Apologies would hardly reach the evil,” said L’Isle.  “But any reparation!  That is a broad term.”

“Any, I mean, that you ought to ask, or I to make.”

“There would be no absolute impropriety in my asking a good deal,” said L’Isle, in tones that reminded Lady Mabel of some witching moments in Elvas, “I will not make the blunder of asking too little,” he added resolutely.  “Let me first ask when you will be at home to-morrow—­at three?”

“Certainly at three; more certainly at two,” she answered in a low tone.

“And most certainly at one,” said he joyously.  “I like your superlative degree of comparison.”

“I only meant,” she said, yet more confused, “that I am more likely to be at home alone at two.”  And turning quickly away, she took a vacant seat beside one of her friends, to whom, while fanning herself, she complained of the heated room.  She seemed, indeed, quite overcome by it, which accounted for her labored breathing and heightened color.

* * * * *

“After all,” said Lady Mabel, some days after the morning on which L’Isle found her at home alone, “I was neither so good an actress, nor so great a hypocrite as you took me for.  My offence was not so much that I simulated, as that I ceased to dissemble.”

L’Isle readily embraced the faith that she was no actress but a true woman, nor did he ever waver from it.  But she did not always find so easy a convert.  Old Moodie, true to his nature, baffled all her efforts to convince him of his errors.  It is true that he became in time, somewhat reconciled to L’Isle, but to his dying day he continued to laud that special providence, which had snatched Lady Mabel from the land of idolatry, at the very last moment before her perversion to Rome.

Lady Mabel was not the woman to forget old friends; and now, that she could recur with pleasure to her recollections of Elvas, she sought out that companion who had so amiably filled the part of duenna and chaperon.  She and Mrs. Shortridge fought all their battles over again, by retracing, step by step, varied excursions and toilsome journey, while enjoying all the comforts of an English home.  But it never does to tell all that we do, still less, to lay open the spirit in which we do it.  Lady Mabel never let Mrs. Shortridge fully into the secret history of the last dark treacherous scene in the episode in winter quarters.

Lord Strathern was much pleased to find that L’Isle had greatly modified his opinion, as to the mechanical nature of an army, and hoped in time to dispel certain other erroneous notions, to which he had formerly clung so stubbornly.  It is not known whether or not L’Isle ever finished his narrative of the Peninsular campaigns.  It is certain that he never published it.  The author often labors harder than the ploughman; and when a man is made happy, he becomes lazy.  Let the wretched toil to mend his lot, or to forget it.