parallel becomes complete.

Until the time of his second marriage Bingley Crocker had been an
actor, a snapper-up of whatever small character-parts the gods
provided. He had an excellent disposition, no money, and one son,
a young man of twenty-one. For forty-five years he had lived a
hand-to-mouth existence in which his next meal had generally come
as a pleasant surprise: and then, on an Atlantic liner, he met
the widow of G. G. van Brunt, the sole heiress to that magnate's
immense fortune.

What Mrs. van Brunt could have seen in Bingley Crocker to cause
her to single him out from all the world passes comprehension:
but the eccentricities of Cupid are commonplace. It were best to
shun examination into first causes and stick to results. The
swift romance began and reached its climax in the ten days which
it took one of the smaller Atlantic liners to sail from Liverpool
to New York. Mr. Crocker was on board because he was returning
with a theatrical company from a failure in London, Mrs. van
Brunt because she had been told that the slow boats were the
steadiest. They began the voyage as strangers and ended it as an
engaged couple--the affair being expedited, no doubt, by the fact
that, even if it ever occurred to Bingley to resist the onslaught
on his bachelor peace, he soon realised the futility of doing so,
for the cramped conditions of ship-board intensified the always
overwhelming effects of his future bride's determined nature.

The engagement was received in a widely differing spirit by the
only surviving blood-relations of the two principals. Jimmy, Mr.
Crocker's son, on being informed that his father had plighted his