"Well, John," he said, "putting aside the cousinship, let me hear what
your idea is of the advantages of such a union, should the parties
concerned change to consider it suitable."

"Quite so, quite so, that's business," said Mr. Porson, brightening up
at once. "From my point of view, these would be the advantages. As you
know, Colonel, so far as I am concerned my origin, for the time I have
been able to trace it--that's four generations from old John Porson,
the Quaker sugar merchant, who came from nobody knows where--although
honest, is humble, and until my father's day all in the line of retail
trade. But then my dear wife came in. She was a governess when I married
her, as you may have heard, and of a very good Scotch family, one of
the Camerons, so Mary isn't all of our cut--any more," he added with a
smile, "than Morris is all of yours. Still for her to marry a Monk would
be a lift up--a considerable lift up, and looked at from a business
point of view, worth a deal of money.

"Also, I like my nephew Morris, and I am sure that Mary likes him, and
I'd wish the two of them to inherit what I have got. They wouldn't have
very long to wait for it, Colonel, for those doctors may say what they
will, but I tell you," he added, pathetically, tapping himself over the
heart--"though you don't mention it to Mary--I know better. Oh! yes, I
know better. That's about all, except, of course, that I should wish to
see her settled before I'm gone. A man dies happier, you understand, if
he is certain whom his only child is going to marry; for when he is
dead I suppose that he will know nothing of what happens to her. Or,
perhaps," he added, as though by an afterthought, "he may know too much,
and not be able to help; which would be painful, very painful."

"Don't get into those speculations, John," said the Colonel, waving his