Brady muttered something about "humbug;" and the search-woman became extremely anxious to explain that it was no part of her business to choose her victims: she had only to discharge her duty upon all who were brought to her. The Lieutenant silenced her by pushing past her, with his wife and sister on each arm. The little crowd opened before them as they re-issued from the house, and closed again round Brady, to learn the result of his loyal enterprise. He was in too thorough an ill-humour to give them any satisfaction, anticipating (what, in fact, proved his fate) that he should be twitted with this deed for months to come, by every man, woman, and child who did not bear a due patriotic affection towards the Preventive Service. The officer did not speak till it was time to deposit his sister at her own door. "Now, Elizabeth," said he, "I hope this will prove a lesson to you. You and my mother came to live here on my account, and on my account you must go away again, unless you can bring your practices into agreement with my duties. It is a lucky chance for you that that rag is of English make, or----" "Oh, brother! do you really think it is not a French silk?" "To be sure, or I should not have said so," replied the Lieutenant, with much displeasure in his tone. "If I chose to tell lies to screen you, you might stay here, following your own fancies, till doomsday. It is because I always will speak the truth about those who belong to me that I request you to go away, if you must do things which make the truth painful for you to hear and for me to tell." "Well, my good sir, do not be in a passion. I only thought you were telling a convenient fib, such as everybody tells about such matters, in the Custom-house and out of it." "Not everybody, as you now find," replied the officer; "and I hope this is the last time you will expose me to the suspicion of fibbing in your behalf." Matilda half withdrew her arm from her husband's, terrified at a mode and strength of rebuke which would have almost annihilated her; but Elizabeth bore it with wonderful indifference, wishing him good morning, as on ordinary days. "She is a good creature," the Lieutenant observed, in his customary phrase, after walking on a few paces in silence. "She is a good creature, but monstrously provoking sometimes. A pretty scrape she had nearly got herself and all of us into." "Remember how lately it was that you were defending the desire for foreign commodities in general, and Elizabeth's in particular," observed Matilda. "Well! all that I said was very true, I believe," replied the officer, half laughing under a sense of his own inconsistency. "I have as firm a faith as ever in the truth of what I then said." "Your doctrine, then, is, that Elizabeth is right in having the desire, and in gratifying it; but that she is wrong in being caught in the fact."