Henrietta’s case was a secondary affair.  What with her passion—­it was nothing less—­and her lover’s cunning arts, and her father’s consent given, and in truth the look of the two together, the dissuasion of them from union was as likely to keep them apart as an exhortation addressed to magnet and needle.  Countess Livia attacked Carinthia Jane and the admiral backing her.  But the admiral, having given his consent to his daughter’s marriage, in consequence of the earl’s pledged word to ’his other girl,’ had become a zealot for this marriage and there was only not a grand altercation on the subject because Livia shunned annoyances.  Alone with Carinthia Jane, as she reported to Henrietta, she spoke to a block, that shook a head and wore a thin smile and nursed its own idea of the better knowledge of Edward Russett, Earl of Fleetwood, gained in the run of a silly quadrille at a ball: 

What is a young man’s word to his partner in a quadrille?

Livia put the question, she put it twice rather sternly, and the girl came out with:  ‘Oh, he meant it!’

The nature, the pride, the shifty and furious moods of Lord Fleetwood were painted frightful to her.

She had conceived her own image of him.

Whether to set her down as an enamoured idiot or a creature not a whit less artful than her brother, was Countess Livia’s debate.  Her inclination was to misdoubt the daughter of the Old Buccaneer:  she might be simple, at her age, and she certainly was ignorant; but she clung to her prize.  Still the promise was extracted from her, that she would not worry the earl to fulfil the word she supposed him to mean in its full meaning.

The promise was unreluctantly yielded.  No, she would not write.  Admiral Fakenham, too, engaged to leave the matter to a man of honour.

Meanwhile, Chillon John had taken a journey to Lekkatts; following which, his uncle went to London.  Lord Fleetwood heard that Miss Kirby kept him bound.  He was again the fated prisoner of his word.

And following that, not so very long, there was the announcement of the marriage of Chillon John Kirby Levellier, Lieutenant in the King’s Own Hussars, and Henrietta, daughter of Admiral Baldwin Fakenham.  A county newspaper paragraph was quoted for its eulogy of the Beauty of Hampshire—­not too strong, those acquainted with her thought.  Interest at Court obtained an advancement for the bridegroom:  he was gazetted Captain during his honeymoon, and his prospects under his uncle’s name were considerd fair, though certain people said at the time, it was likely to be all he would get while old Lord Levellier of Leancats remained in the flesh.