Up and down his face her eyes travelled, seeing if she could detect anywhere a trace of reluctance, and searched in vain.
“Are you quite sure, Colin?” she asked.
“Absolutely. There’s no question about it.”
Once more she held him close to her.
“Oh, it’s too much,” she whispered. “You and Stanier both mine. My heart won’t hold it all.”
“Hearts are wonderfully elastic,” said he. “One’s heart holds everything it desires, if only it can get it. Now there’s a little more to tell you.”
“Yes? Come and sit here. Tell me.”
She drew him down on to the sofa beside her.
“Well, my uncle sent me these letters,” said he, “but, naturally, they won’t be enough by themselves. It was necessary to find out what was the entry in the register of their marriage. My father had told me where it took place, at the British Consulate in Naples, and I got the Consul to let me see the register. I told him I wanted to make a copy of it. I saw it. The marriage apparently took place not on the 31st of March, but on the 1st. But then I looked more closely, and saw that there had been an erasure. In front of the ‘1’ there had been another figure. But whoever had made that erasure had not done it quite carefully enough. It was possible to see that a ‘3’ had been scratched out. The date as originally written was ‘31’ not ‘1.’ That tallies with the date on my mother’s letter.”
Colin’s voice took on an expression of tenderness, incredibly sweet.