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.

Preserve him from tailordom—­from all contact with trade—­they must; otherwise they would be perpetually linked to the horrid thing they hoped to outlive and bury.  A cousin of Mr. Melchisedec’s had risen to be an Admiral and a knight for valiant action in the old war, when men could rise.  Him they besought to take charge of the youth, and make a distinguished seaman of him.  He courteously declined.  They then attacked the married Marine—­Navy or Army being quite indifferent to them as long as they could win for their brother the badge of one Service, ’When he is a gentleman at once!’ they said, like those who see the end of their labours.  Strike basely pretended to second them.  It would have been delightful to him, of course, to have the tailor’s son messing at the same table, and claiming him when he pleased with a familiar ’Ah, brother!’ and prating of their relationship everywhere.  Strike had been a fool:  in revenge for it he laid out for himself a masterly career of consequent wisdom.  The brewer—­uxorious Andrew Cogglesby—­might and would have bought the commission.  Strike laughed at the idea of giving money for what could be got for nothing.  He told them to wait.