he lost
not a moment in laying at her feet his own hand and fortune. And he did
this the more confidently, inasmuch as he could not but be aware of Miss
Jemima's SECRET feelings towards him, while he was _proud_ and _happy_
to say, that his dear and distinguished cousin, Mr. Sharpe Currie, had
honored him with a warmth of regard, which justified the most
_brilliant_ EXPECTATIONS--likely to be _soon_ realized--as his eminent
relative had contracted a _very bad liver complaint_ in the service of
his country, and could not last long!"

In all the years they had known each other, Miss Jemima, strange as it
may appear, had never once suspected the Captain of any other feelings
to her than those of a brother. To say that she was not gratified by
learning her mistake, would be to say that she was more than woman.
Indeed, it must have been a source of no ignoble triumph to think that
she could prove her disinterested affection to her dear Riccabocca, by a
prompt rejection of this more brilliant offer. She couched the
rejection, it is true, in the most soothing terms. But the Captain
evidently considered himself ill used; he did not reply to the letter,
and did not come to the wedding.

To let the reader into a secret, never known to Miss Jemima, Captain
Higginbotham was much less influenced by Cupid than by Plutus in the
offer he had made. The Captain was one of that class of gentlemen who
read their accounts by those corpse-lights, or will-o'-the-wisps, called
_expectations_. Ever since the Squire's grandfather had left him--then
in short clothes--a legacy of L500, the Captain had peopled the future
with expectations! He talked of his expectations as a man talks of
shares in a Tontine; they might fluctuate a little--be now up and now
down--but it was morally impossible, if he lived on, but that he should
be a _millionaire_ one of these days. Now, though Miss Jemima was a good
fifteen years younger than himself, yet she always stood for a good
round sum in the ghostly books of the Captain. She was an _expectation_
to the full amount of her L4000, seeing that Frank was an only child,
and it would be carrying coals to Newmarket to leave _him_ any thing.

Rather than see so considerable a cipher suddenly spunged out of his
visionary ledger--rather than so much money should vanish clean out of
the family, Captain Higginbotham had taken what he conceived, if a
desperate, at least a certain, step for the preservation of his
proper