that office for the good of one's country without tarnish or
disgrace. Am I not a traitor to her already? Have not I formed visions
in my imagination already of obtaining her hand, and her heart, 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, for 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
w