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.