"Of course the man is the parish priest at Sta. Lucia—I don't doubt it. So, thank God, there can be no question of making him marry her. Thank God for that, say I!" Aunt Clo fervently told Lily at breakfast one morning.
"But wouldn't it be better if she was married before—before——?" Lily blushed again, bewildered.
"Never!" said Miss Stellenthorpe, striking the table with her open hand. "It would be a far greater wrong than the first, to compel that poor child to marriage."
The point of view implied was so new to Lily that she immediately felt, in her complete reaction from the standards set before her in her childhood, that it was probably the right point of view.
But as, for some inexplicable reason, she very much objected to those prolonged dissections of the affaire Carla in which Aunt Clo was so ready to indulge, Lily gently turned the conversation to a christening which she had seen take place in the cathedral on the previous afternoon. Aunt Clo was always ready to be intensely interested in ceremonies celebrated by the Catholic or other alien denominations, that would have bored her extremely in the Church to which she belonged.
But on this occasion, she showed but little enthusiasm on the subject of the postmaster's twins.
"Ah, and they've a child not a year old yet—and Heaven alone knows how many Augustino and Maria have had altogether. Criminal, criminal! When will they learn the folly and wickedness of breeding in that reckless way!"
Lily could suggest no helpful solution to a problem of which she scarcely grasped the outline.
To her it merely seemed as if Aunt Clo had no approbation to spare for babies unless they were illegitimate ones.
Staying at Genazzano, Lily began for the first time to experience in some slight degree what is meant by the liberty of the individual.