Carrel turned the knife round with dexterous ringers. "You didn't suppose she was one of the Le Messuriers of Rozaine, did you? Pooh! She kept the shop in the High Street which Roget has now, and that's where the money comes from."
Owen, the son of a third-rate London attorney, naturally recoiled from the prospect of an alliance with retail trade. But perhaps Allez, the father, had been a gentleman?
Carrel quenched this hope at once.
"Tom Allez was son of a man who kept a fruit-stall in the Arcade. He couldn't afford to stock himself, but sold for the growers on commission. However, towards the end of his life, he began to grow tomatoes himself out Cottu way, and was doing very well when he died, and Tom, who was always an ass, brought everything to rack and ruin. But he was already married to Agnes Le Messurier, so the old people took the pair of em home to live with them. And Tom never did anything for the rest of his life but develop Bright's disease, which carried him off when he was forty-one. The boy is an imbecile, as you see. And, by the bye, in counting your eggs, he must be reckoned with. Half the money will go to him, you may be sure. I doubt whether little Agnes will get more than two hundred a year after all."
For twenty-four hours Owen meditated on this news, weighing in the balance his social ambitions against a possible five thousand pounds.
Then he came to Carrel again. "Look here," he said, "you understand these damned little Islands better than I do. Would it really make any difference in my career to contract such a marriage?"
"It would only keep you out of the society of the precious Sixties you are so anxious to cultivate, for the rest of your life," chuckled Carrel; "it would only be remembered against you tothe
