Lady Handsworth also admitted handsomely that his opposition to Lassigny had borne good fruit. "This is a more satisfactory marriage than that would have been, even if M. de Lassigny had been everything you could have wished him to be," she said. "I am glad it has come about so quickly, and so naturally, George. I did say to you, I remember, that her first love meant so much to a girl that if she were disappointed in it no other love could be quite the same to her. But you seem to have judged more rightly than I even over that, which is more of a woman's question than a man's. I suppose it is because you have always had such sympathy with your girls. I confess that I should never have expected to come to Beatrix's wedding within a few months and find her so entirely cured of that other affair. She was very deeply in love, I know, and in the nicest sweetest sort of way; but she seems still more deeply in love now."
"Well, you see she's found the right fellow," said Grafton. "He's worth what she gives him. The other fellow wasn't; but I don't think she'd really given him everything; she only thought she had."
"You're a wise man, George. Women have much more to give to those they love than they have any idea of themselves at first. But men don't usually know that. And only the best sort of men bring it out. B is a darling, but it would make a great deal of difference whom she married. I do think now that with Lassigny she would just have developed as a charming delightful woman, but rather of the butterfly order—even if everything had gone right with their married life. But I think Dick will make her. She will show very fine qualities by and bye. He will bring them out."
"I hope he will," said Grafton.
The Bishop, who had performed the ceremony, was standing in a little group with his wife and Prescott and Viola. "Well, my dear friend," he said, "you've provided one of the happiest weddings I've ever taken part in, and I think I may say one of the very sweetest and prettiest of brides."
"What I like about all your girls, Mr. Grafton," said the Bishop's wife, "is that there's not an ounce of nonsense in them anywhere. They show all their feelings, and they fortunately never have any feelings that they would want to hide."
"That's a very handsome tribute," said Grafton. "But I think it's deserved."
"I've never seen anybody look happier than the little bride," she went on. "If all the marriages you have solemnised, my dear, bid fair to turn out so satisfactorily as this one—!"
"Yes," said the Bishop. "Marriage is a blessed state where there's complete love and trust. I think one could say that neither of these two would be complete without it."
"Or without one another," said Viola. "Gerry, dear, I thought we were the most satisfactory couple you could find anywhere, but Dick and B have advantages over us. He is not so harum-scarum as you are, and she is much prettier and nicer than I am."