He went courting the daughter of an old sea- captain who was a churchwarden of his parish and lived in an old badly preserved Georgian house with a garden: one of these houses standing in a reduced bit of "grounds" that you discover in a labyrinth of the most sordid streets, exactly alike and composed of six-roomed hutches.
Some of them were the vicarages of slum parishes.

The old sailor had got hold of one cheap, and de Barral got hold of his daughter--which was a good bargain for him.

The old sailor was very good to the young couple and very fond of their little girl.

Mrs.de Barral was an equable, unassuming woman, at that time with a fund of simple gaiety, and with no ambitions; but, woman-like, she longed for change and for something interesting to happen now and then.

It was she who encouraged de Barral to accept the offer of a post in the west-end branch of a great bank.