"Do!", cried Miss Harris, with fervor, "it cannot fail! How much do you suppose will be wanting to buy a barony, for instance?" "Hem!" said Jarvis; "you mean more than we have already?" "Certainly." "Why, about a thousand pounds, I think, will do it, with what we have," said Jarvis, affecting to calculate. "Is that all?" cried the delighted Caroline; and the captain grew in an instant, in her estimation, three inches higher;--quite noble in his air, and, in short, very tolerably handsome. From that moment, Miss Harris, in her own mind, had fixed the fate of Captain Jarvis, and had determined to be his wife, whenever she could persuade him to offer himself; a thing she had no doubt of accomplishing with comparative ease. Not so the Captain. Like all weak men, there was nothing of which he stood more in terror than of ridicule. He had heard the manoeuvres of Miss Harris laughed at by many of the young men in Bath, and was by no means disposed to add himself to the food for mirth of these wags; and, indeed, had cultivated her acquaintance with a kind of bravado to some of his bottle companions, in order to show his ability to oppose all her arts, when most exposed to them: for it is one of the greatest difficulties to the success of this description of ladies, that their characters soon become suspected, and do them infinitely more injury than all their skill in their vocation. With these views in the respective champions the campaign opened, and the lady, on her return, acquainted his mother with the situation of the privy purse, that was to promote her darling child to the enviable distinction of the peerage. Lady Jarvis was for purchasing a baronetcy on the spot, with what they had, under the impression that when ready for another promotion they would only have to pay the difference, as they did in the army when he received his captaincy. As, however, the son was opposed to any arrangement that might make the producing the few hundred pounds he had obtained from his mother's folly necessary, she was obliged to postpone the wished-for day, until their united efforts could compass the means of effecting the main point. As an earnest, however, of her spirit in the cause, she gave him a fifty pound note, that morning obtained from her husband, and which the Captain lost at one throw of the dice to his brother-in-law the same evening. During the preceding events, Egerton had either studiously avoided all collision with the Moseleys, or his engagements had confined him to such very different scenes, that they never met. The Baronet had felt his presence a reproach, and Lady Moseley rejoiced that Egerton yet possessed sufficient shame to keep him from insulting her with his company. It was a month after the departure of Lady Chatterton that Sir Edward returned to B----, as related in the preceding chapter, and that the arrangements for the London winter were commenced.