The marriages had happened in this way.  Balls are given in country towns, where the graces of tradesmen’s daughters may be witnessed and admired at leisure by other than tradesmen:  by occasional country gentlemen of the neighbourhood, with light minds:  and also by small officers:  subalterns wishing to do tender execution upon man’s fair enemy, and to find a distraction for their legs.  The classes of our social fabric have, here and there, slight connecting links, and provincial public balls are one of these.  They are dangerous, for Cupid is no respecter of class-prejudice; and if you are the son of a retired tea-merchant, or of a village doctor, or of a half-pay captain, or of anything superior, and visit one of them, you are as likely to receive his shot as any shopboy.  Even masquerading lords at such places, have been known to be slain outright; and although Society allows to its highest and dearest to save the honour of their families, and heal their anguish, by indecorous compromise, you, if you are a trifle below that mark, must not expect it.  You must absolutely give yourself for what you hope to get.  Dreadful as it sounds to philosophic ears, you must marry.  This, having danced with Caroline Harrington, the gallant Lieutenant Strike determined to do.  Nor, when he became aware of her father’s occupation, did he shrink from his resolve.  After a month’s hard courtship, he married her straight out of her father’s house.  That he may have all the credit due to him, it must be admitted that he did not once compare, or possibly permit himself to reflect on, the dissimilarity in their respective ranks, and the step he had taken downward, till they were man and wife:  and then not in any great degree, before Fortune had given him his majority; an advance the good soldier frankly told his wife he did not owe to her.  If we may be permitted to suppose the colonel of a regiment on friendly terms with one of his corporals, we have an estimate of the domestic life of Major and Mrs. Strike.  Among the garrison males, his comrades, he passed for a disgustingly jealous brute.

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