told me she thought you the most interesting man 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