“No, my dear, you were still a girl, and your deeper woman’s heart had not grown to perceive that it was not met.”
“He chose me,” she faintly said.
“His mother needed a daughter. It was proper for him to marry, and you were the most eligible party. I will answer for it that he warned you how little he could give.”
“He did,” cried Cecil. “He did tell me that he could not begin in freshness and warmth, like a young man; but I thought it only meant that we were too sensible to care about nonsense, and liked him for it. He always must have been staid and reserved—he could never have been different, Camilla. Don’t smile in that way! Tell me what you mean.”
“My dear Cecil, I knew Raymond Poynsett a good many years before you did.”
“And—well? Then he had a first love?” said Cecil, in a voice schooled into quiet. “Was he different then? Was he as desperate as poor Frank is now?”
“Frank is a very mild copy of him at that age. He overbore every one, wrung consent from all, and did everything but overcome his mother’s calm hostility and self-assertion.”
“Did that stop it? She died of course,” said Cecil. “She could not have left off loving him.”
“She did not die, but her family were wearied out by the continual objections to their overtures, and the supercilious way of treating them. They thought it a struggle of influence, and that he was too entirely dominated for a daughter-in-law to be happy with her. So they broke it off.”
“And she—” Cecil looked up with searching eyes.