"Yes, dear. Does that surprise you? Haven't you, really, seen it coming?—We fancied that everyone must be guessing, while we were finding it out for ourselves," Imogen answered, ever so gently.
"No, I never saw it, never dreamed of it."
"It seemed so impossible? Why, Mary dear?"
"I don't know;—he is so much older;—he isn't an American;—you won't live in your own country;—I never imagined you marrying anyone but an American."
The deepest wonder, Imogen knew it very well, was the one she could not express:—I thought that he was in love with your mother.
Imogen smiled over the simplicity of the spoken surprises. "I don't think that the question of years separates people so at one as Basil and I," she said. "You would find how little such things meant, Mary mine, if your calm little New England heart ever came to know what a great love is. As for my country, my country will be my husband's country, but that will not make me love my old home the less, nor make me forget all the things that life has taught me here, any more than I shall be the less myself for being a bigger and better self as his wife." And Imogen looked so uplifted in saying it that poor, bewildered Mary felt that Mrs. Upton, after all, was right, one couldn't tell where rightness was. Such love as Imogen's couldn't be wrong. All the same, she was not sorry that Imogen, all transfigured as she undoubtedly was, should be going very far away. Mary did not feel happy with Imogen any longer.
Rose took the tidings in a very unpleasant manner; but then Rose didn't count; in any circumstances her effrontery went without saying. One simply looked over it, as in this case, when it took the form of an absolute silence, a white, smiling silence.
Oddly enough, from the extreme of Rose's anger, came Eddy's chance. She didn't tell Eddy that she saw his mother as robbed and that, in silence, her heart bled for her; but she did say to him, several days after Imogen's announcement, that, yes, she would.
"I know that I should be bound to take you some day, and I'd rather do it just now when your mother has quite enough bothers to see to without having your anxieties on her mind! I'll never understand anyone so well as I do you, or quarrel with anyone so comfortably;—and besides," Rose added with characteristic impertinence, "the truth is, my dear, that I want to be your mother's daughter. It's that that has done it. I want to show her how nice a daughter can be to her. I want to take Imogen's place. I'll be an extremely bad wife, Eddy, but a good daughter-in-law. I adore your mother so much that for her sake I'll put up with you."
Eddy said that she might adore any one as much as she liked so long as she allowed him to put up with her for a lifetime. They did understand each other, these two, and Valerie, though a little troubled by the something hard and bright in their warring courtship, something that, she feared, would make their path, though always illuminated, often rough, could welcome her new daughter with real gladness.