Admiral Sir Ira—then Captain Brunton—did not again venture on the dangerous sea of matrimony, but brought home his widowed mother to take charge of the young lady, and engaged a French governess to superintend her education. But a simple-minded, old-fashioned dame, and an unprincipled French adventuress, were not exactly the best guides for a self-willed girl.
And so it happened that when Miss Anna Eleanora was about sixteen years of age, while her father was at sea, and herself with her grandmother and governess at Brighton, she accidentally formed the acquaintance of a young lieutenant of Hussars, whose regiment was stationed at the neighboring barracks. With the connivance of the French governess, who was heavily feed for the purpose, the young officer frequently met the little heiress, with whom he finally eloped to Gretna Green, where they were married.
If, instead of that romantic love which had misled both the young creatures, fortune had been the object of the lieutenant, he must have been wofully disappointed, for when the captain returned from the coast of Africa, and heard of the runaway marriage, he discarded his daughter and son-in-law, and forbade the names of either ever to be mentioned in his presence.
As the commands of Captain Brunton were as absolute as the laws of the Medes and Persians, the name of his only child and her young husband dropped from conversation and from memory, and thus their offence, and even their very existence, became an old and forgotten story.
The captain rose from post to post in the navy, until, finally, at the advanced age of seventy-five, he retired from active service with the well-earned rank of an admiral and the well-merited title of a baronet.
His household at this late period of his life was a very remarkable illustration of family longevity.
It consisted of his grandmother, a hale old dame of one hundred and eight years; his mother, a healthy old woman of ninety-two; himself, a hearty veteran of seventy-five; and his grand-nephew and adopted heir, Midshipman Valerius Brightwell, a young gentleman of nineteen.
The antique grandmother of this strong family was commonly called “old mistress,” “the old madam,” or “old Mrs. Stilton.” The ancient mother was termed “young mistress,” “the young madam,” or “young Mrs. Brunton.” The veteran admiral was denominated by his venerable ancestresses “that thoughtless boy,” and by the household, “the young master.” And the midshipman was called by the old ladies, “the dear baby,” by the admiral, “the lad,” and by the servants, “little Master Vally.”
At the venerable age of seventy-five, with an emaciated form, a withered face, and a grey head, the veteran did not even suspect that he was growing old, far less know that he was really an aged man, who had already exceeded the average duration of a human life.
The truth was that the existence and the vigorous health of the two ancient ladies, his mother and his grandmother, kept the admiral in his prime. How could any man feel old, while his mother and his grandmother still lived in a green old age—and while they still thought of him and spoke of him as a gay young man, who had not yet sowed all his wild oats, but who required the constant supervision and guidance of his elders to keep him out of temptation and danger?