h he had seen little of domestic life, he was an affectionate
man. The briskness of the last campaign, and the number of his friends
who dropped off in the course of it, strongly warned him that if he
would once again see his daughter, now attaining womanhood, it would
be well to lose no time about it. So, one morning, during the retreat
from Burgos, after issuing the brigade orders for the day, he penned
an order to his sister in Scotland, to send out the young lady, with
proper attendants, under the care of the wife of any officer of rank
who might be sailing for Lisbon. There she would be within reach, and
he might find leisure to visit her.

His sister would have protested against this had she had an
opportunity; but the order of the father, and the affectionate and
adventurous spirit of the daughter, at once decided the matter. On her
arrival, however, in Lisbon, her father was too busy establishing his
brigade in comfortable quarters, to meet her there; and the military
horizon giving promise of a quiet winter, he summoned her to join him
at Elvas.

The brigade had been for some weeks living in clover in their modern
Capua, when Lady Mabel Stewart joined her father. A Portuguese
provincial town, with its filthy streets and squalid populace, could
be no agreeable place of residence to a British lady. Lord Strathern
felt this, and, looking about him, found a large building in the midst
of an orchard without the walls of Elvas, and more than half-way down
the hill. It had been erected by one of the monastic societies of the
city, as a place of occasional retirement for pleasure, or devotion,
or both. The French had summarily turned them out of it five years
before, and so thoroughly plundered them, at the same time, that they
had not since found heart or means to repair and refurnish it.
Accordingly, it was a good deal dilapidated. But the refectory and the
kitchen took his lordship's eye. The former could dine half the
officers of the brigade at a time, and the latter allowed abundant
elbow-room to cooks and scullions, while preparing the feast. So, here
he established the headquarters of his brigade, and here Lady Mabel
Stewart made her appearance in the new dignity of womanhood, to
preside over his household.

CHAPTER II.

Oh sovereign beauty, you whose charms
All other charms surpass;
Whose lustre nought can imitate,
Except your looking-glass.

Southey, _from the