“My dear Mortimer, you have studied my character. Could I possibly go down there, labelled ‘ Eligible. On View ,’ and meet the lady, similarly labelled? Anything to carry out M.R.F. ’s arrangements, I am sure, with the greatest pleasure⁠—except matrimony. Could I possibly support it? I, so soon bored, so constantly, so fatally?”

“But you are not a consistent fellow, Eugene.”

“In susceptibility to boredom,” returned that worthy, “I assure you I am the most consistent of mankind.”

“Why, it was but now that you were dwelling in the advantages of a monotony of two.”

“In a lighthouse. Do me the justice to remember the condition. In a lighthouse.”