ad been forgotten by her, and the risks of annoyance
on the subject had quite blown over, returned to town, happy in having
done the penance for his impulsiveness, and got clean again--that is
to say, struck off his fetters and escaped from importunities--the very
morning of the day when Lord Levellier sprang upon him! It shows the old
campaigner's shrewdness in guessing where his prey would come, and not
putting him on his guard by a call at his house. Out of the window he
looked for all the hours of light during an entire fortnight. 'In the
service of my sister's child,' he said. 'To save him from the cost of
maintaining her,' say his enemies. At any rate he did it.

He was likely to have done the worse which I suspect.

Now, the imparting of the wonderful news to Admiral Baldwin Fakenham
was, we read, the whiff of a tropical squall to lay him on his beam
ends. He could not but doubt; and his talk was like the sails of a big
ship rattling to the first puff of wind. He had to believe; and then, we
read, he was for hours like a vessel rolling in the trough of the sea.
Of course he was a disappointed father. Naturally his glance at the
loss to Henrietta of the greatest prize of the matrimonial market of all
Europe and America was vexing and saddening. Then he woke up to think
of the fortunes of his 'other girl,' as he named her, and cried: 'Crinny
catches him!'

He cried it in glee and rubbed his hands.

So thereupon, standing before him, Chillon John, from whom he had the
news, bent to him slightly, as his elegant manner was, and lengthened
the admiral's chaps with another proposal; easy, deliberate, precise,
quite the respectful bandit, if you please, determined on having his
daughter by all means, only much preferring the legal, formal, and
friendly. Upon that, in the moment of indecision, Henrietta enters,
followed by Admiral Baldwin's heroine, his Crinny, whom he embraced
and kissed, congratulated and kissed again. One sees the contrivance to
soften him.

So it was done, down in that Hampshire household on the heights near the
downs, whence you might behold, off a terra firma resembling a roll of
billows, England's big battle-ships in line fronting the island; when
they were a spectacle of beauty as well as power: which now they are no
more, but will have to be, if they are both to float and to fight. For
I have, had quoted to me by a great admirer of the Old Buccaneer, one of
the dark sayings in his MAXIMS FOR