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.
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