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That this same beauty was to be turned to the best account in the matrimonial market, followed naturally enough, as the second article of belief in the poor girl’s creed.

Of the two plainer sisters, one, the elder, was married respectably, though by no means brilliantly, to a young curate, over-worked and under-paid; in these particulars, I fear, no exception to his class. The other was hopelessly engaged to a lieutenant in the navy, dependent on his pay, which had hitherto barely sufficed to keep his own head above water, and whose only prospects consisted in a vague talk of far distant “promotion.”

But the there was Florence! Florence the beautiful, whose brilliant marriage was to be the turning point in the fortunes of her family:—to obtain a comfortable living for her older brother-in-law; and in some mysterious way to bring the Admiralty to a sense of what was owing to the meritorious but unappreciated lieutenant.

Hardly was the girl out of short frocks and pinafores, before the anxious, scheming mother set to work to plan her future and obtain for her the desired opportunity. Nor must we judge her harshly. Poverty, and above all poverty of the striving, pinching, keeping-up-appearances kind, is not an influence likely to exalt or refine the character, and poor Mrs. Vyse, no lofty-minded woman to begin with, sank and deteriorated beneath it, as many better people have done before and since.