onour of their families, and heal their
anguish, by indecorous compromise, you, if you are a trifle below that
mark, must not expect it. You must absolutely give yourself for what you
hope to get. Dreadful as it sounds to philosophic ears, you must marry.
This, having danced with Caroline Harrington, the gallant Lieutenant
Strike determined to do. Nor, when he became aware of her father's
occupation, did he shrink from his resolve. After a month's hard
courtship, he married her straight out of her father's house. That he
may have all the credit due to him, it must be admitted that he did
not once compare, or possibly permit himself to reflect on, the
dissimilarity in their respective ranks, and the step he had taken
downward, till they were man and wife: and then not in any great degree,
before Fortune had given him his majority; an advance the good soldier
frankly told his wife he did not owe to her. If we may be permitted
to suppose the colonel of a regiment on friendly terms with one of his
corporals, we have an estimate of the domestic life of Major and
Mrs. Strike. Among the garrison males, his comrades, he passed for a
disgustingly jealous brute.

The ladies, in their pretty language, signalized him as a 'finick.'

Now, having achieved so capital a marriage, Caroline, worthy creature,
was anxious that her sisters should not be less happy, and would have
them to visit her, in spite of her husband's protests.

'There can be no danger,' she said, for she was in fresh quarters, far
from the nest of contagion. The lieutenant himself ungrudgingly declared
that, looking on the ladies, no one for an instant could suspect; and he
saw many young fellows ready to be as great fools as he had been another
voluntary confession he made to his wife; for the candour of which
she thanked him, and pointed out that it seemed to run in the family;
inasmuch as Mr. Andrew Cogglesby, his rich relative, had seen and had
proposed for Harriet. The lieutenant flatly said he would never allow
it. In fact he had hitherto concealed the non-presentable 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 certain