Meanwhile Mrs. Mortimer looked at the sea, till Johnnie told her
that it was dinner-time.
II.
WHY MEN DON'T MARRY.
We were sitting around the fire at Colonel Holborow's. Dinner
was over--had, in fact, been over for some time--the hour of
smoke, whisky, and confidence had arrived, and we had been
telling one another the various reasons which accounted for our
being unmarried, for we were all bachelors except the colonel,
and he had, as a variety, told the reasons why he wished he was
unmarried (his wife was away). Jack Dexter, however, had not
spoken, and it was only in response to a direct appeal that he
related the following story. The story may be true or untrue,
but I must remark that Jack always had rather a weakness for
representing himself on terms of condescending intimacy with
the nobility and even greater folk.
Jack sighed deeply. There was a sympathetic silence. Then he
began:
"For some reason best known to herself," said Jack, with a
patient shrug of his shoulders, "the Duchess of Medmenham (I
don't know whether any of you fellows know her) chose to object
to me as a suitor for the hand of her daughter, Mary Fitzmoine.
The woman was so ignorant that she may really have thought that
my birth was not equal to her daughter's; but all the world knows
that the Munns were yeomen two hundred years ago, and that her
Grace's family hails from a stucco villa in the neighborhood of
Cardiff.
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