Complete and unabridged, with 56 full-page plates by Walter Sickert, William Quiller Orchardson and Vilhelm Hammershøi. Three young men in London chambers marry, work and fail at various rates, and the harness of the title tightens on each differently. Edmund Yates was a Post Office clerk who became a famous editor, and quarrelled with Thackeray in the row that split the Garrick Club. The novel is a fair picture of what a young professional's marriage cost in 1864. Fifty-six plates, from Wilkie's Chelsea Pensioners to Tissot's domestic scenes, mirror the marriage, money and reading of wills that shape the story.