"And how did you come to be a staff-officer of the English general?" she asked. "I have had awfully good luck," Terence replied. "It happened in all sorts of ways." "Please tell me everything," she said. "I want to know all about you." "It is a long story, Mary." "So much the better," she said. "I know nothing of what has passed for the last year, and I dare say I shall learn about it from your story. You don't know how happy I am feeling to be out in the sun and in the air again, and to see the country after being shut up in one room for a year. Suppose we sit down here and you tell me the whole story." Terence accordingly related the history of his adventures since he had left England. The girl asked a great many questions, and specially insisted upon hearing his own adventures very fully. "It is no use your keeping on saying that it is all luck," she said when he had finished. "Your colonel could not have thought that it was luck when he wrote the report about that adventure at sea, and your general could not have thought so, either, or he would not have praised you in his despatch. Then, you know, General Fane must have thought that it was quite out of the way or he would not have chosen you to be on his staff. Then afterwards the other general must have been pleased with you, or he would not have put you on his staff and sent you off on a mission to General Romana. It is quite certain that these things could not have been all luck, Terence. And anyhow, you cannot pretend that it was luck that this regiment of yours fought so well against the French, while none of the others seem to have fought at all. I suppose that you will say next that it was all luck that you got me out of the convent." "There was a great deal of luck in it, Mary. If that cowardly bishop hadn't left Oporto secretly, after declaring that he would defend it until the last, I could never have got his ring." "You would have got me out some other way if he hadn't," the girl said, with confidence. "No, Terence, you can say what you like, but I shall always consider that you have been wonderfully brave and clever." "Then you will always think quite wrong," Terence said, bluntly. "I shall begin to think that you are a tyrant, like the Bishop of Oporto, if you speak in that positive way. How old are you, sir?" "I was sixteen six months ago." "And I was sixteen three days ago," she said. "Fancy your commanding two thousand soldiers and only six months older than I am."