CHAPTER XVII.
THE ELOPEMENT.
It was past two o'clock when I reached the town.

On entering the barrack-yard, I perceived a large group of officers chatting together, and every moment breaking into immoderate fits of laughter.

I went over, and immediately learned the source of their mirth, which was this: No sooner had it been known that Fitzgerald was about to go to a distance, on a professional call, than a couple of young officers laid their heads together, and wrote an anonymous note to Mrs.Fitz.who was the very dragon of jealousy, informing her, that her husband had feigned the whole history of the patient and consultation as an excuse for absenting himself on an excursion of gallantry; and that if she wished to satisfy herself of the truth of the statement, she had only to follow him in the morning, and detect his entire scheme; the object of these amiable friends being to give poor Mrs.Fitz.a twenty miles' jaunt, and confront her with her injured husband at the end of it.
Having a mind actively alive to suspicions of this nature, the worthy woman made all her arrangements for a start, and scarcely was the chaise and four, with her husband, out of the town, than was she on the track of it, with a heart bursting with jealousy, and vowing vengeance to the knife, against all concerned in this scheme to wrong her.
So far the plan of her persecutors had perfectly succeeded; they saw her depart, on a trip of, as they supposed, twenty miles, and their whole notions of the practical joke were limited to the eclaircissement that must ensue at the end.

Little, however, were they aware how much more nearly the suspected crime, was the position of the poor doctor to turn out; for, as by one blunder I had taken his chaise, so he, without any inquiry whatever, had got into the one intended for me; and never awoke from a most refreshing slumber, till shaken by the shoulder by the postillion, who whispered in his ear--"here we are sir; this is the gate." "But why stop at the gate?
Drive up the avenue, my boy." "His honor told me, sir, not for the world to go farther than the lodge; nor to make as much noise as a mouse." "Ah! very true.

He may be very irritable, poor man! Well stop here, and I'll get out." Just as the doctor had reached the ground, a very smart-looking soubrette tripped up, and said to him-- "Beg pardon, sir; but you are the gentleman from the barrack, sir ?" "Yes, my dear," said Fitz., with a knowing look at the pretty face of the damsel, "what can I do for you ?" "Why sir, my mistress is here in the shrubbery; but she is so nervous, and so frightened, I don't know how she'll go through it." "Ah! she's frightened, poor thing; is she?
Oh! she must keep up her spirits, while there's life there's hope." "Sir." "I say, my darling, she must not give way.