ile, "but
somehow or other, it is always the best method to bring young folks
together, to let them have their own way in the affair for a time."

"Own way!" rejoined Sir Peter, bluntly, "did you ever find it answer to
let a woman have her own way, Sir Frederick?"

"Not common women certainly, my good friend," said the general, "but such
a girl as my intended daughter is an exception."

"I don't know that," cried the sailor; "Bell is a good girl, but she has
her quirks and whims like all the sex."

"You have had no trouble with her as yet, I believe, Howell," said Sir
Frederick cavalierly, throwing an inquiring glance on his friend at the
same time.

"No, not yet--nor do I think she will ever dare to mutiny; but there has
been one wishing to take her in tow already since we got in."

"How!" said the other in alarm, "who--what is he? some officer in the
navy, I suppose."

"No, he was a kind of chaplain, one Parson Ives, a good sort of a youth
enough, and a prodigious favorite with my sister, Lady Hawker."

"Well, what did you answer, Peter?" said his companion in increasing
uneasiness; "did you put him off?"

"Off! to be sure I did--do you think I wanted a barber's clerk for a
son-in-law? No, no, Denbigh; a soldier is bad enough, without having a
preacher."

The general compressed his lips at this direct attack on a profession that
he thought the most honorable of any in the world, in some resentment; but
remembering the eighty thousand pounds, and accustomed to the ways of the
other, he curbed his temper, and inquired--

"But Miss Howell--your daughter--how did she stand affected to this
priest?"

"How--why--how?--why I never asked her."

"Never asked her?"

"No, never asked her: she is my daughter, you know, and bound to obey my
orders, and I did not choose she should marry a parson; but, once for all,
when is the wedding to take place?"

General Denbigh had indulged his younger son too blindly and too fondly to
expect that implicit obedience the admiral calculated to a certainty on,
and with every prospect of not being disappointed, from his daughter.
Isabel Howell was pretty, mild, and timid, and unused to oppose any of her
father's commands; but George Denbigh was haughty, positive, and
self-willed, and unless the affair could be so managed as to make him a
willing assistant in the courtship, his father knew it might be abandoned
at once. He thought his son might be led, but not driven; and, relyi