and her
fortune? Is not this treachery? Shall I not attempt to win her
affections under disguise as her father's friend and partisan? But what
have women to do with politics? Or if they have, do not they set so
light a value upon them, that they will exchange them for a feather?
Yes, surely; when they love, their politics are the politics of those
they cling to. At present, she is on her father's side; but if she
leave her father and cleave to me, her politics will be transferred with
her affections. But then her religion. She thinks me a Protestant.
Well, love is all in all with women; not only politics but religion must
yield to it: `thy people shall be my people, and thy God shall be my
God,' as Ruth says in the Scriptures. She is wrong in politics, I will
put her right. She is wrong in religion, I will restore her to the
bosom of the church. Her wealth would be sacrificed to some heretic; it
were far better that it belonged to one who supports the true religion
and the good cause. In what way, therefore, shall I injure her? On the
contrary." And Ramsay walked down-stairs to find Wilhelmina. Such were
the arguments used by the young cavalier, and with which he fully
satisfied himself that he was doing rightly; had he argued the other
side of the question, he would have been equally convinced, as most
people are, when they argue without any opponent; but we must leave him
to follow Vanslyperken.

Mr Vanslyperken walked away from the syndic's house with the
comfortable idea that one side of him was heavier than the other by one
hundred guineas. He also ruminated; he had already obtained three
hundred pounds, no small sum, in those days I or a lieutenant. It is
true that he had lost the chance of thousands by the barking of
Snarleyyow, and he had lost the fair Portsmouth widow; but then he was
again on good terms with the Frau Vandersloosh, and was in a fair way of
making his fortune, and, as he considered, with small risk. His mother,
too, attracted a share of his reminiscences; the old woman would soon
die, and then he would have all that she had saved. Smallbones
occasionally intruded himself, but that was but for a moment. And Mr
Vanslyperken walked away very well satisfied, upon the whole, with his
_esse_ and _posse_. He wound up by flattering himself that he should
wind up with the savings of his mother, his half-pay, the widow's
guilders, and his own property--altogether it would be pretty
co