"I assure you I do not know where to find another."
"Your offer is exceedingly tempting," said Lady Mabel, bowing ironically low. "But I am too much in debt already to the gentlemen in his majesty's service. To turn one of his colonels into my Spanish master would be seriously to misemploy his precious time. I would feel that I was robbing my country. Is it not positive treason to aid and abet the king's enemies? Then it is negative treason, to divert from his service any of the king's friends."
"But you forget that I am an invalid, not yet fit for duty."
"You are getting more fit for it every day. My invalid tutor would become a sound colonel long before I had made much progress under his tuition."
"But I would not object to relaxing from my military duties, and prolonging my invalid condition in your service."
"Let me beg that you do no such thing, but hasten to get so well as to forget your wounds, and the awkward occasion on which you received them."
"Why," said L'Isle, in some surprise, "what have you heard of that occasion?"
"Perhaps you, like some other people, do not care to be reminded of your blunders," said Lady Mabel, mischievously.
"Blunders?" said L'Isle, "I do not see how a soldier can avoid exposing himself occasionally to the risk of being shot, sabred, or bayoneted. What blunder of mine have you heard of?"
"Merely that on the approach of a French column, you, instead of rejoining the main body, in great alarm hid yourself and your men in a little Spanish village too mean to have a name. The French found you out, and kept you shut up there in great trepidation for five or six hours, while they were cutting away your barricades, beating in the doors, and tearing off the roofs of the houses. Your case was as desperate as that of a rat in a trap; and when your friends came to your relief, they had to knock a great many of the French in the head before they could persuade them to let you slip out. But, by some lucky misunderstanding at headquarters, you were soon after made a lieut. colonel."