St. John lifts his eyebrows almost imperceptibly at the last clause. "If you like to look out for a wife for me," he says, flinging himself indolently into an arm-chair, and speaking half-seriously, half-derisively, "and will engage to undertake all the bore of the preliminaries--love-making, dancing attendance, etc.--I have no objection to marrying, since the duty of continuing this illustrious race has been perverse enough to devolve on me, who, God knows, am not ambitious of perpetuating myself." "Love-making!--pooh!" repeats Sir Thomas, contemptuously; "we need have none of that rubbish; respect and esteem are a deal the best basis to go upon; that's what your mother and I began life with----" "And have continued undiminished up to the present day," says St. John, with a slight sneer. "Well" (yawning), "if you can find, amongst the wide range of your acquaintance, any young lady who is willing to respect and esteem me--which is not likely--or to respect and esteem Felton--which is more probable, and, after all, comes to much the same in the end--she may have the felicity of being your daughter-in-law, for all I shall do to hinder it: anything for a quiet life." Sir Thomas turns his bright little fierce eyes sharply upon his offspring, prepared, at a moment's notice, to precipitate himself into one of his blustering, sputtering, God damning rages if he detect the slightest sign of mirth or derision on the young man's face. But none such is to be found; his downcast eyes are fixed with lazy interest upon his own substantial legs, stretched in black-and-crimson-ribbed stockings, straight before him. The ire of his parent's gaze is mitigated. "If you are in earnest," he says, surlily, "and not making a jest of this, as you mostly do of every serious subject, why--why--there's no use in going far afield for what one has ready to one's hand." "Where?" asks St. John, thoroughly mystified by the Delphic obscurity of his papa's remark, looking vaguely round the room, out on the terrace, at the laughing, tumbling fountain, at the garden roller. "Where?" repeats Sir Thomas, rather irritated at his son's obtuseness. "Why, here! not five yards off! in this very house!" Then, seeing him still look puzzled: "God bless my soul, sir! where are your wits to-day? How can you do better than Conny? That bit of land of hers down at Four Oaks dovetails into ours as neatly as possible; it seems as if it were intended by Providence," ends Sir Thomas, piously. St. John gives a long, low whistle. "Conny!" he repeats, in unfeigned surprise. "I should as soon have thought of marrying my mother. Why, we have been like brother and sister all our lives." "Fiddlesticks!" says Sir Thomas, gruffly. "She is no more your sister than I am. When I was young, if people were born brothers and sisters they called themselves so, and if they were not they did not. I hate your adopted brother and sister and father and motherhoods."