joz, where he
had been repairing shattered bastions, and patching up curtains sadly
torn by shot and shell. He found Lady Mabel busy renovating,
modernising and adorning the rude and comfortless apartments of her
monastic quarters. Immediately his pencil, his professional ingenuity
and skill are devoted to her service. He appoints himself architect,
upholsterer and improver-general to the household. He designed elegant
curtains, with graceful festoons for the misshapen windows, tasteful
hangings to conceal bare walls of rough-hewn stone, picturesque
screens to hide unsightly corners; and arranged and put them up with
as much skill as if, with a native genius for it, he had been bred to
the business. The commonest materials became rich chintz and costly
arras in his hands, mahogany, or rose-wood, at his bidding. One
morning so spent put him on an easier footing with Lady Mabel than a
dozen casual meetings; and he quite got the weather gage of both
equerry and huntsman, securing frequent and easy intercourse, while
advising and assisting her in his inter-menial capacity, whereas these
gentlemen's spheres of official duty lay properly out of doors. But he
soon found a dangerous rival to take the wind out of his sails, in the
person of Major Lumley, who, possessing great taste and skill in
music, accidentally heard Lady Mabel singing in one room, while he was
conversing with her father in the next. "She has," thought and said
the major, "the sweetest voice in the world; and it only needs a
little more cultivation to make it heavenly!" Lord Strathern thought
so too. The major's instructive talents were put into requisition,
and, from private practice, her father led her on, somewhat reluctant,
to more public display, and soon the major and herself discoursed
exquisite music to the ears of a score of officers, at a musical
soiree. If, with the powers, she did not acquire the confidence of a
_prima donna_, it was not his lordship's fault. Had propriety
permitted, he would have brought up the brigade in close column of
divisions, to hear Lady Mabel sing; and he could not help saying to
the gentlemen beside him: "I have heard you young fellows talk about
the nightingale, and have even known some of you spend hours in the
moonlit grove, listening to their music, but my bird from foggy
Scotland can out-warble a wood full of them." And no one felt disposed
to contradict him.

How many others, irresistibly attracted, sought, each i