gamekeeper, or rather, grand huntsman, bound to lay the feathered,
furred, and scaly tribes under contribution to supply her table and
tempt her delicate appetite. A proud and happy man was he when skill
or fortune enabled him to lay the antlered stag or tusked boar at her
feet, and expatiate on the incidents of his sylvan campaign. He, of
course, must be often invited to partake of the social meal. Captain
Cranfield, of the engineers, had just returned from Badajoz, 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