Her
father and mother shouldered the responsibility of paraphrasing his
genteel pretensions by enumerating, for the gratification or envy of
other Canadian husband-seekers, the many titled connections and
immediate relatives of their prospective son-in-law.
If all they said were true he must have been related to half the
landed aristocracy of that world-famed metropolis. What surprised me,
above and beyond all comprehension, was, that Mrs. Merivale, for a
lady who had completely forgotten that "prepositions govern the
objective case," could remember with such accurate fidelity the
endless syllables of these high-sounding titles, and the intricate
channels and by-ways through which the original blue blood came down
the stream of vanished generations into the narrow vessels that made
Mr. Sylvester Davenport Clyde's humanity sacred and precious to
fashionable eyes.
There was not much mention of whose son he was, his social prestige
had a more remote source than his immediate parentage. He was greater
as a grandson, immortal as a nephew, a very idol on fashion's shrine
when his relations by marriage were taken into account. He had endless
cousins of high-bred notoriety, who had again married into still
greater and grander families, all of whom Mrs. Merivale now reckoned
as easily at her fingers' ends, as she could the days of the week, or
seasons of the year. In this brainless boy who was, and ever must be
an alien to the finer susceptibilities and nobler aspirations of true
and sturdy manhood, the Merivales were pleased to see, a full and
happy realization of all their fondest hopes.
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