“My dear,” she said, “it is too late for me to oppose what has survived so much. Nor have I the right; at your age you must please yourself. Of course, I wish you had chosen otherwise.”
“I think you will not wish so for long,” said Hugh, as he kissed her warmly.
Mrs Crichton was not ready to accede to this remark; she was troubled and anxious; and when Arthur presently came to see her and Hugh left him with her she expressed her doubts strongly.
“You wouldn’t wish Hugh to lose his better half, Aunt Lily,” he said, half playfully, and then he told of Violante’s simplicity and sweetness till Mrs Crichton was half convinced, though she still held to—
“Yes, my dear, it was very delightful for you all to rave about her; but can you imagine her Hugh’s wife, and an English lady of position?”
“Well, Aunt Lily, I can imagine Hugh very well as her husband, which is the point to interest you, I suppose.”
Mrs Crichton behaved beautifully. She forestalled Hugh’s proposals for an introduction, by going with him the next day to call on Violante, who was now staying with the Greys, from whose house Rosa was to be married.
Violante was alone in the drawing-room, and she started up flushing and trembling, then, without heeding Hugh, she went right up to Mrs Crichton and put her little hand in hers.
“I will try so hard to please you, Signora,” she said, with faltering lips.
“My dear, I am not difficult to please,” said Mrs Crichton, and somehow her fears of incongruity and incompleteness went into the background before the charm of the soft eyes and the sweet humility of the heroine of her son’s romance, which, for good or for evil, was to be the one great reality of his life.