"Nay," said Lady Mabel, "a stripe for every bad line will be cutting criticism enough."
"Who is this fellow? Is it the Don Alonso Melendez you were telling me of?"
"Never mind his name, Papa. I am afraid you might have him flayed alive, while the poor fellow deserves nothing but laughter for his doggerel." And while this doggerel was secretly pressed by her bosom, she stole a look at L'Isle, and was surprised to see how little galled he seemed to be by her ridicule.
"What is the burden of Sir Rowland's verses?" she asked, addressing him.
"Very true!" exclaimed L'Isle; "I had forgotten to read it." And breaking the seal, he ran his eye hastily over the letter. "I must leave Elvas at once, and be away some days," he said, with a look of dissatisfaction.
"Sir Rowland is very fond of sending you on his errands," remarked Lord Strathern. "And, hitherto you seemed to like the extra work he gave you."
"I would be gladly excused from it just now," answered L'Isle, and in spite of himself, his eye wandered toward Lady Mabel. Lord Strathern did not observe this, but said, jestingly: "I believe you have contrived to convince Sir Rowland that none of us can do any thing so well as you can," but there was a little tone of pique in the way this was said.
"I have made no attempt to do so," L'Isle answered. "But he has given me some thing to do now, and I must set about it at once." Taking leave of Lady Mabel, he held a short private conference with his lordship, and, when he went out to mount his horse, found Colonel Bradshawe already in the saddle, waiting for him. This annoyed him, for he instinctively knew Bradshawe's object, and looked to be ingeniously cross-questioned as to the verses which Lady Mabel had recited, and then criticised so unsparingly. Unwilling to let Bradshawe stretch him on the rack for his amusement, L'Isle assumed the offensive, and at once broached another matter which he had much at heart.
"I wonder when we will leave Elvas," he exclaimed, abruptly. "If we stay here much longer, we will be at war with the people around us. I never knew my lord so negligent of discipline. It evidently grows upon him."
"The old gentleman," said Bradshawe, carelessly, "certainly holds the reins with a slack hand."