hat Meynell had told me," continued
Bradshawe, "when I met Shortridge, and lo! L'Isle had already found
them out in their dirty lodgings," and the colonel went on to repeat
and embellish Shortridge's narrative of L'Isle's kind attention, and
the origin of their intimacy. Various were the comments of the company
on the affair. But they all agreed to the justness of their colonel's
criticism, when he remarked: "That scene in the Patriarchal Church
must have been exceedingly well got up. I should like much to have
been by. Have you ever remarked that a woman never faints out-and-out,
when there is no man near enough, and ready enough, to catch her
before she falls to the ground?"

This was a physiological fact, as to female fainting, that some of the
company admitted was new to them.

"Now, you are all sharp fellows," said Bradshawe, with a patronizing
wave of the hand; "and some of you profess to be men of intrigue; yet
I doubt whether any one of you can tell me why the house is not handed
over to Shortridge until at the end of three days."

One suggested one reason; another, another. But wine had failed to
sharpen their wits, and he scornfully rejected their solutions.

"Three days may be needed," said he, gravely, "to fit a double set of
keys to every lock in the house. Shortridge will have one. L'Isle may
keep the other, and with it the power of letting himself in and out at
any minute of the twenty-four hours."

How stupid did his companions think themselves. The thing was now
patent to the dullest apprehension.

"It is curious," continued the colonel, "that Shortridge, so keen a
fellow in all business transactions (for both we and the government
have found him too sharp for us before now), should be in these little
delicate domestic relations such an egregious gull. You all know I do
not view these little matters from the parson's point of view; but
still, there is a propriety to be observed. To think," continued
Bradshawe, with a countenance of comic horror, "of his proposing to
make our friend Shortridge lie in a ditch, for his accommodation! Our
punctilious comrade is getting to be a very bare-faced fellow. Just
snatched from the brink of the grave, too," added he, in a sudden fit
of pious indignation. "What a deliberate, cold-blooded fellow!"

Having thus, by fitting a few chance hints to each other, brought out
a pretty piece of Spanish intrigue, that would have delighted Calderon
or Lope de Vega, the co