cantered on to join Mrs. Shortridge.

Now Moodie was a shrewd man, perhaps a little too shrewd, with an eye
open to human depravity; he was learned, too, in his way; many a heavy
tome of Scotch controversial divinity had been thumbed by him as
carefully as his Bible; but he never dwelt on any thing he found there
not sustaining his preconceived notions. He involuntarily slighted
those parts even of Scripture that he could not wrest to his purpose.
Many an historical and traditionary fact, too, floated loosely on his
mind; but his geographical education had been sadly neglected. A
topographical knowledge of half a dozen shires, a general notion of
the shape of old Scotland, and a hazy outline of the sister kingdom,
made up all he had attained to. Had you laid before him a chart of the
sea coast of Bohemia, first discovered by our great dramatist, it
would not have startled him in the least, and he was ready to look for
Africa at any point of the compass.

He now saw clearly that this journey was part of a plot. L'Isle had
first won the confidence of father and daughter; then availing himself
of her love for botany, had habituated her to his presence and
protection on short excursions around Elvas; he had used the
commissary and his wife to beguile Lady Mabel from her father's
protection, under pretence of a short journey to a neighboring town.
Having now rid himself of the innocent commissary, he was leading her
by devious paths far beyond pursuit. Lady Mabel seemed bewitched, and
no longer saw with her own eyes. Was Mrs. Shortridge a simple gull or
something worse? "Perhaps," thought Moodie, "Colonel Bradshawe is
right;" for an eaves-dropping valet had given his scandal wings.

Moodie was not deeply read in romance; but he remembered the