"The family I am most intimate with is that of Count Leon de Balen. He is a young man of about five-and-twenty, with three young sisters, the eldest of whom is about the age of sixteen. Leon has been in England and speaks English fairly, and is very English in his ways, and doesn't keep his sisters bottled up, as most of these Spaniards do; and I visit there just as I should at any English house where I was intimate. Roper is, of course, with me. He has been nominally enlisted in an English dragoon regiment, and wears the uniform. I am having an English staff uniform made for me, and were you here you would see me swaggering down the streets as if they belonged to me; I really feel as if I were somebody. I hope to hear that you are all pleased, and that even you agree that could not possibly do better for myself than remain here till the end of the war. How long that will be, goodness only knows! I shall be in no hurry, for it is just the life, of all others, to suit me. Love to all.
"Your affectionate Nephew."
In due time the answer arrived:
"My dear Arthur,
"We are all delighted at the receipt of your letter. We should, of course, be extremely glad to have you back with us, but at the same time we cannot but recognize that you could not do better for yourself than you are doing. I do not know that personally I am extraordinarily gratified that you should be holding a commission as captain in Her Majesty's service, and as Assistant British Commissioner in Spain; but I am bound to say that your aunt and cousins seem to be filled with an altogether excessive pride in the position you have gained. The girls have been going about among their friends crowing like little gamecocks, and even your aunt, ordinarily a tranquil and quietly-disposed woman, appears to be quite puffed up.
"However, joking aside, we are all highly gratified--I certainly admit that I myself am highly gratified too--and feel that you could not do better for yourself than remain for three or four years, by which time, I hope, the war will be finished. You will, as you say, see what is going on without running any serious risks; and when you are in Madrid I can quite imagine that, with your official position, you will lead a very pleasant life. I almost feel, Arthur, that you are getting altogether beyond advice, and are now able to go on your own way. I can only say, therefore, that we shall be all very glad to have you back again with us, and I hope that every trace of the unpleasantness which necessarily resulted from our last interview will be altogether forgotten.
"Your affectionate Uncle."
That evening Arthur called at the house of the young Count Leon de Balen. It was one of the houses at which he had become most intimate. The count had little of the reserve and hauteur common to most Spanish nobles. He had from the first taken a great fancy to Arthur, and had made the latter at all times welcome to his house. It had been one of the first to which he had been invited after his arrival at Madrid, and was one of the few which were always open to him.
"I have been taken to task several times," the young man said one day with a laugh, "for inviting a man, and that man a foreigner and a heretic, so familiarly to my house. Two years ago I was for a few mouths with our embassy in London, and I came to like your ways very much. It was very pleasant to be able to make calls at houses without ceremony, and I made many friends. It seemed to me in all respects better, for young people get to know each other and to like each other. Young men and young women in your country meet and talk and dance together, and are good friends, without thinking of marriage; whereas here girls are for the most part shut up until a marriage is arranged for them. Of course I hold, as other people do, that young ladies should not go out alone, and should always be accompanied by a duenna; but in their own house, and under their parents' eyes, I can see no occasion for strictness. I might have some hesitation in giving a young Spaniard a general invitation to my house, because he would not understand it, and would think that I wished to introduce him as a suitor to one of my sisters; but with an Englishman it is different. You laugh and talk with them as if they were your own, and I think it is very good for them, and that they are as pleased to see you as I am."
When, therefore, Arthur had no other engagement he very often went in for a chat in the evening to the young count's, and he was naturally one of the first he told of his new appointment.