The general compressed his lips at this direct attack on a profession that he thought the most honorable of any in the world, in some resentment; but remembering the eighty thousand pounds, and accustomed to the ways of the other, he curbed his temper, and inquired—­

“But Miss Howell—­your daughter—­how did she stand affected to this priest?”

“How—­why—­how?—­why I never asked her.”

“Never asked her?”

“No, never asked her:  she is my daughter, you know, and bound to obey my orders, and I did not choose she should marry a parson; but, once for all, when is the wedding to take place?”

General Denbigh had indulged his younger son too blindly and too fondly to expect that implicit obedience the admiral calculated to a certainty on, and with every prospect of not being disappointed, from his daughter.  Isabel Howell was pretty, mild, and timid, and unused to oppose any of her father’s commands; but George Denbigh was haughty, positive, and self-willed, and unless the affair could be so managed as to make him a willing assistant in the courtship, his father knew it might be abandoned at once.  He thought his son might be led, but not driven; and, relying on his own powers for managing, the general saw his only safety in executing the scheme was in postponing his advances for a regular siege to the lady’s heart.

Sir Peter chafed and swore at this circumlocution:  the thing could be done as well in a week as in a year; and the veterans, who, for a miracle, had agreed in their rival stations, and in doubtful moments of success, were near splitting on the point of marrying a girl of nineteen.

As Sir Peter both loved his friend, and had taken a prodigious fancy to the youth, he however was fain to submit to a short probation.

“You are always for going a round-about way to do a thing,” said the admiral, as he yielded the point.  “Now, when you took that battery, had you gone up in front, as I advised you, you would have taken it in ten minutes, instead of five hours.”

“Yes,” said the other, with a friendly shake of the hand at parting, “and lost fifty men in place of one by the step.”

Chapter XLII.

The Honorable General Denbigh was the youngest of three sons.  His seniors,
Francis and George, were yet bachelors.  The death of a cousin had made
Francis a duke while yet a child, and both he and his favorite brother
George, had decided on lives of inactivity and sluggishness.

“When I die, brother,” the oldest would say, “you will succeed me, and Frederick can provide heirs for the name hereafter.”

This arrangement had been closely adhered to, and the two elder brothers reached the ages of fifty-five and fifty-six, without altering their condition.  In the mean time, Frederick married a young woman of rank and fortune; the fruits of their union being the two young candidates for the hand of Isabel Howell.