if you should ever marry your wife must be a beauty,
else you could not love her."

"Very true, Janet, and I have no intention of retracting or
diminishing my rigid requirements, but my definition of beauty
includes more than mere physical perfection,--than satin skin,
pearl-tinted, fine eyes, faultless teeth, abundant silky tresses, and
rounded figure. It demands that the heart whose blood paints lips and
cheek, shall be pure, generous, and holy; that the soul which looks
out at me from lustrous eyes shall be consecrated to another deity
than Fashion,--shall be as full of magnanimity, and strength, and
peace, as a harp is of melody; my beauty means meekness, faith,
sanctity, and exacts mental, moral, and material excellence. Rest
assured, my dear, sage counsellor, that if ever I bring a wife to my
hearthstone I will have selected her in obedience to the advice of
Joubert, who admonished us, 'We should choose for a wife only the
woman we would choose for a friend, were she a man.'"

"You expect too much; you will never find your perfect ideal walking
in flesh."

"I will content myself with nothing less--I promise you that."

"Oh, no doubt you will believe that the woman you marry is all that
you dream or wish; but some fine morning you will present me with a
sister as full of foibles and vanities and frailties as any other
spoiled and cunning daughter of Eve. Of course every bridegroom
classes as 'perfect' the blushing, trembling young thing who peeps
shyly at him from under a tulle veil and an orange wreath; but, take
my word for it, there is a spice of Delilah in every pretty girl, and
the credulity of Samson slumbers in all lovers. Nevertheless, Ulpian,
I would sooner see you in bondage to a pair of white hands and hazel
eyes,--would rather know that like all your race you were utterly
humbugged--hoodwinked--by some fair-browed belle, whose low voice
rippled over pouting pink lips, than have you live always alone, a
confirmed old bachelor. After all, I doubt whether you have really
never had a sweetheart, for every schoolboy swears allegiance to some
yellow-haired divinity in ruffled muslin aprons."

Dr. Grey laid his hand gently on the shrivelled fingers that were
busily engaged in shelling some seed-beans, and answered, jocosely,--

"Have I not often told you, that my dear, old, patient sister Janet,
is my only lady-love?"

"And your silly old Janet is not such an arrant fool as to believe any
such nonsen