"And now I will leave you," said L'Isle; "I will finish my visit when
you are more suitably lodged. I know how annoying it must be to a neat
English woman to receive her friends in such a place as this." And he
left Mr. and Mrs. Commissary full of gratitude for his attentions, and
of a growing conviction that they were people of some importance and
fashion.

The military gentlemen in Elvas had, most of them, abundant leisure on
their hands, and, like the Athenians in St. Paul's day, spent their
time in little else "than either to tell or to hear some new thing
every day." Colonel Bradshawe, strolling about the _praca_ with this
praiseworthy object, had the luck to meet with Adjutant Meynell, and
at once began to pump him for news. But the adjutant, being a man of
the same kidney, needed no pumping at all. He at once commenced laying
open to the colonel, under the strictest injunctions to secrecy, the
thing weighing most on his mind, which was the curious little
conversation he had just held with his own colonel, not forgetting to
give a few extra touches to the expressions of satisfaction that the
news of Mrs. Shortridge's arrival had called forth. After sifting and
twisting the matter to their own satisfaction, they parted, and the
colonel continued his stroll, chewing the cud of the last news he had
swallowed. An hour or so after, whom should he meet with, by the
greatest good luck, but the commissary himself. Now, Shortridge was
rather a favorite with the colonel, being a man who knew how to make
himself useful. For instance, he was the very agent who had so
judiciously declined purchasing the refuse sherry wines which Soult,
Victor & Co. had contemptuously left on the market; while, with equal
judgment and promptitude, he had laid in for the mess an abundant
stock of the best port, malmsey and Madeira. Two such cronies, meeting
for the first time for ten days, had much conference together; in the
course of which the colonel learned all about the straits
Mrs. Shortridge was put to for lodgings, and how she was to be
relieved through the considerate kindness of L'Isle. This led to a
minute account of the occasion on which their acquaintance began, and
rather an exaggerated statement of the social relations existing
between the aristocratic colonel and the Shortridge firm.

"I have been sometimes galled and ruffled by his haughty manner," said
the commissary; "but now I know it is only his manner. He is very
consid