‘He has been somewhat like Robinson Crusoe’s old goat,’ said Louis.  ’Poor Jem! the fall and the scanty fare tamed him.  I liked him so well before, that I did not know how much better I was yet to like him.  Mary, you must see his workhouse.  Giving up his time to it as he does, he does infinite good there.’

’Yes, Mr. Calcott says that he lives in fear of some one offering him a living,’ said Lord Ormersfield.

‘And the dear old Giraffe?’ said Louis.

’Clara?  She is looking almost handsome.  I wish some good man would marry her.  She would make an excellent wife.’

‘I am not ready to spare her yet,’ said Mary; ’I must make acquaintance with her before any excellent man carries her off.’

‘But there is a marriage that will surprise you,’ said the Earl; ‘your eldest cousin, whose name I can never remember—­’

‘Virginia,’ cried Louis.  ‘Captain Lonsdale, I hope!’

‘What could have made you fix on him?’

’Because the barricades could not have been in vain, and he was an excellent fellow, to whom I owe a great deal of gratitude.  He kept my aunt’s terrors in abeyance most gallantly; and little Virginia drank in his words, and built up a hero!  But how was it?’

’You remember that Lady Conway would not take our advice, and stay quietly at home.  On the first steamer she fell in with this captain, and it seems that she was helpless enough, without her former butler, to be very grateful to him for managing her passports and conducting her through Germany.  And the conclusion was, that she herself had encouraged him so far, that she really had not any justification in refusing when he proposed for the young lady, as he is fairly provided for.’

’My poor aunt!  No one ever pities her when she is ’hoist with her own petard!’ I am glad poor Virginia is to be happy in her own way.’

‘I shall send my congratulations to-morrow,’ said the Earl, smiling triumphantly, ’and a piece of intelligence of my own.  At H. B. M. Consul’s, Lima—­what day was it, Louis?’

Mary ran away to take off her bonnet, as much surprised by the Earl’s mirth as if she had seen primroses in December.  Yet such blossoms are sometimes tempted forth; and affection was breathing something like a second spring on the life so long unnaturally chilled and blighted.  If his shoulders were bowed, his figure had lost much of its rigidity; and though his locks were thinned and whitened, and his countenance slightly aged, yet the softened look and the more frequent smile had smoothed away the sternness, and given gentleness to his dignity.

No sooner was she out of the room than Lord Ormersfield asked, ’And what have you done with the Spanish woman?’

The answer excited a peal of laughter, which made Louis stand aghast, both at such unprecedented merriment and at the cause; for hitherto he had so entirely felt with Mary, as never to have seen the ludicrous aspect of the elopement.  Presently, however, he was amused by perceiving that his father not merely regarded it as a relief from an embarrassing charge, but as an entire acquittal for his own conscience for any slanders he had formerly believed of Dona Rosita.