The stickling for precedency, by the way, is a disorder very prevalent in colonial dependencies; and like gravitation, which increases with the squares of the distance, its intensity seems to be governed by a somewhat similar law, and to exist in an inverse ratio to the apparent cause for it. Long after the general had passed his fiftieth year, he married the mother of the amiable widow (a nonpareil grafted on a crab), by all accounts a charming person, who, yielding to importunity, took old Capsicum to gratify the ambition of worldly parents, in whose opinion wealth and rank are all that are essential to connubial happiness. Poor thing! she gave her hand, but her heart was another’s. The worm-i’-the-bud was there, and soon did the business. Opportunity offered—nature was too powerful for the colder suggestions of duty—she eloped with the man she loved; but even love cannot flourish in an atmosphere of scorn. Mankind are intensely gregarious. Shunned—deserted by her own sex, who, like birds (though from more obvious cause), peck their wounded fellows to death—she died in a lone outpost, and the winds of the jungles pipe over her solitary grave. “C’est bien difficile d’être fidèle A de certains maris, faits d’an certain modelle, Et qui donne à sa fille un homme qu’elle haït. Est responsable au Ciel pour le mal qu’elle fait.” Admirable Molière! you never penned a more striking truth. Parents, ponder it well. The general, after the lapse of some years, with the characteristic valour of the Capsicums, boldly ventured, a short time before I knew him, on a second marriage; but here he caught a Tartar. Mrs. Capsicum the second was an Irish lady (woman I should perhaps say), who came out to India avowedly on spec., with the full determination of marrying a good establishment, with comfortable reversionary prospects, however they might happen to be encumbered. She made play at the general, sang “Erin mavourneen” and “Cathleen O’More,” talked of the Callaghans and Brallaghans, revived the general’s boyish reminiscences of the green hills of Sligo, and ultimately led him, or rather had him carried, to the hymeneal altar! Of love—the proper cement of the marriage-union—there was none, on her side at least. But to return to my narrative. The widow and I had not been long engaged in conversation (which, as I before hinted, was becoming rather interesting), when we heard the scrape of a violin outside in the passage. “Oh, here is my father,” said Mrs. Delaval, “coming from his room. Now remember my caution.” I was about to reply, but she laid her finger on her lip expressively, as much as to say, “Another time; he’s here.”