Unfortunately, Admiral Fakenham, a real knight and chevalier of those past times, would not let her mount the downs to have her farewell view of the big ships unaccompanied by him; and partly and largely in pure chivalry, no doubt; but her young idea of England’s grandeur, as shown in her great vessels of war, thrilled him, too, and restored his youthful enthusiasm for his noble profession or made it effervesce.  However it was, he rode beside her and rejoiced to hear the young girl’s talk of her father as a captain of one of England’s thunderers, and of the cruelty of that Admiralty to him:  at which Admiral Baldwin laughed, but had not the heart to disagree with her, for he could belabour the Admiralty in season, cause or no cause.  Altogether he much enjoyed the ride, notwithstanding intimations of the approach of ‘his visitor,’ as he called his attacks of gout.

Riding home, however, the couple passed through a heavy rainfall, and the next day, when he was to drive with the bride to Lekkatts, gout, the fiercest he had ever known, chained him fast to his bed.  Such are the petty accidents affecting circumstances.  They are the instruments of Destiny.

There he lay, protesting that the ceremony could not possibly be for the fourteenth, because Countess Livia had, he now remembered, written of her engagement to meet Russett on the night of that day at a ball at Mrs. Cowper Quillett’s place, Canleys, lying south of the Surrey hills:  a house famed for its gatherings of beautiful women; whither Lord Fleetwood would be sure to engage to go, the admiral now said; and it racked him like gout in his mind, and perhaps troubled his conscience about handing the girl to such a young man.  But he was lying on his back, the posture for memory to play the fiend with us, as we read in the book of maxims of the Old Buccaneer.  Admiral Baldwin wished heartily to be present at his Crinny’s wedding ‘to see her launched,’ if wedding it was to be, and he vowed the date of the fourteenth, in Lord Levellier’s announcement of it, must be an error and might be a month in advance, and ought to be.  But it was sheer talking and raving for a solace to his disappointment or his anxiety.  He had to let Carinthia Jane depart under the charge of his housekeeper, Mrs. Carthew, a staid excellent lady, poorly gifted with observation.

Her report of the performance of the ceremony at Croridge village church, a half mile from Lekkatts, was highly reassuring to the anxious old admiral still lying on his back with memory and gout at their fiend’s play, and livid forecasts hovering.  He had recollected that there had been no allusion in Lord Levellier’s message to settlements or any lawyer’s preliminaries, and he raged at himself for having to own it would have been the first of questions on behalf of his daughter.

‘All passed off correctly,’ Mrs. Carthew said.  ’The responses of the bride and bridegroom were particularly articulate.’