an she had ever met."

"Did she indeed!" ejaculated Morris. "Why, I have only spoken three
times to her during the last year."

"No doubt, my dear boy, that is why she thinks you interesting. To her
you are a mine of splendid possibilities. But I understand that you
don't like either of them."

"No, not particularly--especially Eliza Layard, who isn't a lady, and
has a vicious temper--nor any young woman whom I have ever met."

"Do you mean to tell me candidly, Morris, that at your age you detest
women?"

"I don't say that; I only say that I never met one to whom I felt much
attracted, and that I have met a great many by whom I was repelled."

"Decidedly, Morris, in you the strain of the ancestral fish is too
predominant. It isn't natural; it really isn't. You ought to have been
born three centuries ago, when the old monks lived here. You would have
made a first-class abbot, and might have been canonised by now. Am I to
understand, then, that you absolutely decline to marry?"

"No, father; I don't want you to understand anything of the sort. If I
could meet a lady whom I liked, and who wouldn't expect too much, and
who was foolish enough to wish to take me, of course I should marry her,
as you are so bent upon it."

"Well, Morris, and what sort of a woman would fulfil the conditions, to
your notion?"

His son looked about him vaguely, as though he expected to find his
ideal in some nook of the dim garden.

"What sort of a woman? Well, somebody like my cousin Mary, I suppose--an
easy-going person of that kind, who always looks pleasant and cool."

Morris did not see him, for he had turned his head away; but at the
mention of Mary Porson's name his father started, as though someone had
pricked him with a pin. But Colonel Monk had not commanded a regiment
with some success and been a military attache for nothing; having filled
diplomatic positions, public and private, in his time, he could keep
his countenance, and play his part when he chose. Indeed, did his
simpler-minded son but know it, all that evening he had been playing a
part.

"Oh! that's your style, is it?" he said. "Well, at your age I should
have preferred something a little different. But there is no accounting
for tastes; and after all, Mary is a beautiful woman, and clever in
her own way. By Jove! there's one o'clock striking, and I promised old
Charters that I would always be in bed by half-past eleven. Good night,
my boy. By the way, you rem