"It would suit you the least of all women," said Mrs. Shortridge. "You might die in the cloister, but could not live there."
"Oh, I am sure I could stand a short novitiate, say three or six months," exclaimed Lady Mabel.
"Your novitiate, soon to end in freedom," said L'Isle, "would not help you to the experience of the true internal life of the nun. It is pleasant to walk, leading your horse by the rein, and at liberty to mount when you like; but the essence of monastic life lies in the conviction that you have turned your back forever on the world without, with all its trials, its hopes and fears, its passions and pursuits, and have given yourself religiously to tread through this life, the narrow path you have chosen, to the next."
"You have convinced me," said Lady Mabel. "In my longing after a varied experience of the conditions of life, I might sacrifice half a year to the trial of one, but I prefer ignorance on this point to the burden of a life-enduring vow."
"If our knowledge were limited by our own experience, we would know little indeed," said L'Isle. "Our capacity to bring home to ourselves other conditions than our own, depends more on the transferring and transforming faculties of the imagination, than on the observing powers of the eye. If, indeed, we had never felt bodily pain, we could not feel for a man on the rack. Had we never known anguish of mind, we might not estimate the mental agonies of others. But we have feelings, for the exercise of which sympathy and imagination can create conditions. We can feel with the captive in the dungeon, without going down there to take a place by his side."
"Still, there is nothing like experience in one's own person," said Mrs. Shortridge. "I can now sympathize fully with the toilworn traveler, across a parched and thirsty desert, under a broiling sun. I own that the pleasures of this journey far exceed its pains, thanks to your care and company; but, as Lady Mabel says, the chief pleasure comes afterward, and this journey will be still more pleasant next week than now."
"In spite of its hardships," said Lady Mabel, "it has been so agreeable to me, that I would have it last a week longer. As an escort, interpreter, and cicerone, Colonel L'Isle has no rival. He has, too, filled the commissary's place so well, that we have suffered nothing from your good man's desertion."
The pleasure Lady Mabel expressed, and her frank admission that she wished the journey longer, delighted L'Isle. He longed to tell her that he was ever at her command as companion, guardian, and guide on any journey, however long. But no—he must not say that. He had no thoughts of matrimony—at least, just now. A remote prospect did indeed float before his eyes, in which he saw himself having outlived this war, and attained the rank of Major-General, returning home to find Lady Mabel still lovely and still free to listen to a lover's suit. This was but a bright vista of the future, hemmed in and overhung by many a dark contingency, a glowing picture in an ebony frame.
The character of the country underwent a change as they rode on. Sloping downward toward the Guadiana, over a succession of hills which concealed the descent, the soil became more fertile, but was scarcely more cultivated than in the region which they had just left behind them. The heaths and broom plants now gave place to a variety of evergreen shrubs. Though the forest trees had vanished centuries ago, the prospect was often shut out by the thickets that overspread the country. An occasional spot of open ground indicated some attempts at cultivation, but they saw few peasants, and but one village seated on a hill, until passing a wretched hamlet, they reach the bank of a brook. The shade of some trees, already in full leaf, in this sheltered spot, tempted them to make here their noonday halt.
Seating herself on the fern and moss at the foot of an old mulberry-tree that overhung the little stream, Lady Mabel pointed out to her companions, that the trees around them were all of the same kind.