The ladies, in their pretty language, signalized him as a ‘finick.’

Now, having achieved so capital a marriage, Caroline, worthy creature, was anxious that her sisters should not be less happy, and would have them to visit her, in spite of her husband’s protests.

‘There can be no danger,’ she said, for she was in fresh quarters, far from the nest of contagion.  The lieutenant himself ungrudgingly declared that, looking on the ladies, no one for an instant could suspect; and he saw many young fellows ready to be as great fools as he had been another voluntary confession he made to his wife; for the candour of which she thanked him, and pointed out that it seemed to run in the family; inasmuch as Mr. Andrew Cogglesby, his rich relative, had seen and had proposed for Harriet.  The lieutenant flatly said he would never allow it.  In fact he had hitherto concealed the non-presentable portion of his folly very satisfactorily from all save the mess-room, and Mr. Andrew’s passion was a severe dilemma to him.  It need scarcely be told that his wife, fortified by the fervid brewer, defeated him utterly.  What was more, she induced him to be an accomplice in deception.  For though the lieutenant protested that he washed his hands of it, and that it was a fraud and a snare, he certainly did not avow the condition of his wife’s parents to Mr. Andrew, but alluded to them in passing as ’the country people.’  He supposed ‘the country people’ must be asked, he said.  The brewer offered to go down to them.  But the lieutenant drew an unpleasant picture of the country people, and his wife became so grave at the proposal, that Mr. Andrew said he wanted to marry the lady and not the ‘country people,’ and if she would have him, there he was.  There he was, behaving with a particular and sagacious kindness to the raw lieutenant since Harriet’s arrival.  If the lieutenant sent her away, Mr. Andrew would infallibly pursue her, and light on a discovery.  Twice cursed by Love, twice the victim of tailordom, our excellent Marine gave away Harriet Harrington in marriage to Mr. Andrew Cogglesby.

Thus Joy clapped hands a second time, and Horror deepened its shadows.

From higher ground it was natural that the remaining sister should take a bolder flight.  Of the loves of the fair Louisa Harrington and the foreign Count, and how she first encountered him in the brewer’s saloons, and how she, being a humorous person, laughed at his ‘loaf’ for her, and wore the colours that pleased him, and kindled and soothed his jealousy, little is known beyond the fact that she espoused the Count, under the auspices of the affluent brewer, and engaged that her children should be brought up in the faith of the Catholic Church:  which Lymport gossips called, paying the Devil for her pride.

The three sisters, gloriously rescued by their own charms, had now to think of their one young brother.  How to make him a gentleman!  That was their problem.