niece of a
half-pay captain--an orphan, without money or connections."

"Humph!" muttered John Saltram with the privileged candour of friendship;
"not a very advantageous match for you, Gilbert, from a worldly point of
view."

"I have not considered the matter from that point of view."

"And the lady is all that is charming, of course?"

"To my mind, yes."

"Very young?"

"Nineteen."

"Well, dear old follow, I wish you joy with all heartiness. You can
afford to marry whom you please, and are very right to let inclination
and not interest govern your choice. Whenever I tie myself in the bondage
of matrimony, it will be to a lady who can pay my debts and set me on my
legs for life. Whether such a one will ever consider my ugly face a fair
equivalent for her specie, is an open question. You must introduce me to
your future wife, Gilbert, on the first opportunity. I shall be very
anxious to discover whether your marriage will be likely to put an end to
our friendship."

"There is no fear of that, Jack. That is a contingency never to arise. I
have told Marian a great deal about you already. She knows that I owe my
life to you, and she is prepared to value you as much as I do."

"She is very good; but all wives promise that kind of thing before
marriage. And there is apt to come a day when the familiar bachelor
friend falls under the domestic taboo, together with smoking in the
drawing-room, brandy-and-soda, and other luxuries of the old, easy-going,
single life."

"Marian is not very likely to prove a domestic tyrant. She is the
gentlest dearest girl, and is very well used to bachelor habits in the
person of her uncle. I don't believe she will ever extinguish our cigars,
Jack, even in the drawing-room. I look forward to the happiest home that
ever a man possessed; and it would be no home of mine if you were not
welcome and honoured in it. I hope we shall spend many a summer evening
on the lawn, Jack, with a bottle of Pomard or St. Julien between us,
watching the drowsy old anglers in their punts, and the swift outriggers
flashing past in the twilight. I mean to find some snug little place by
the river, you know, Saltram--somewhere about Teddington, where the
gardens slope down to the water's edge."

"Very pleasant! and you will make an admirable family man, Gil. You have
none of the faults that render me ineligible for the married state. I
think your Marian is a very fortunate girl. What is her surname, by the