“My daughter, Mary; and—so—why shouldn’t they—you know?”
“Really, John, I must ask you to be a little more explicit. It’s no good your addressing me in your business ciphers.”
“Well—I mean—why shouldn’t he marry her? Morris marry Mary? Is that plain enough?” he asked in desperation.
For a moment a mist gathered before the Colonel’s eyes. Here was salvation indeed, if only it could be brought about. Oh! if only it could be brought about.
But the dark eyes never changed, nor did a muscle move upon that pale, commanding countenance.
“Morris marry Mary,” he repeated, dwelling on the alliterative words as though to convince himself that he had heard them aright. “That is a very strange proposition, my dear John, and sudden, too. Why, they are first cousins, and for that reason, I suppose, the thing never occurred to me—till last night,” he added to himself.
“Yes, I know, Colonel; but I am not certain that this first cousin business isn’t a bit exaggerated. The returns of the asylums seem to show it, and I know my doctor, Sir Henry Andrews, says it’s nonsense. You’ll admit that he is an authority. Also, it happened in my own family, my father and mother were cousins, and we are none the worse.”
On another occasion the Colonel might have been inclined to comment on this statement—of course, most politely. Now, however, he let it pass.
“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.