I was silent with confusion. The next word, and Lilia might unbosom herself of secrets not her own—sacred to her father—not from any malice aforethought, but through the spontaneity to which she was bred by that very father. It behoved me to be cautious.
“I really should tell Sir Roderick if I were you,” I hazarded. “It is only what he would reasonably expect. Cousins often marry. The contingency must have occurred to him.”
At that moment I was inclined to think that such an issue might even have been planned by my self-sufficient host.
“I thought you knew him!” she cried, recoiling from me a little.
Nero got up and stood between us, looking suspiciously at me.
I explained, apologetically, that although Sir Roderick and I had talked over the questions of humanity in the abstract, we had not arrived at the domestic problems.
“The most important of all,” she said, somewhat pompously.
“Granted,” I said. “And problems that can, unfortunately, only be solved by individual experience.”
“Ah! you acknowledge that,” she said, with a sort of exultation. “You really uphold my father’s theory—that the risk is too great. He loves both Roderick and myself so well that he has preached the delights of celibacy to us ever since I can recollect.”
“His preaching has had more effect upon you than upon your cousin, evidently,” I suggested.