There was not even the vague, elusive sense of remote and delicate romance that Colin Eastwood had inspired.
But Philip had implied that episode to have been an undignified and childish cheapening of herself—something that, in the belittling phrase of omniscient parenthood, "could not lead to anything," and Lily herself, translating into the cruder and more direct terms of youth, had known that, between her and Colin, there could be nothing so matured and definite as a spoken engagement with definite prospects of marriage.
Consequently, her relations with Colin must have been unreal—those with Nicholas must be real. Thus Lily, faithfully endeavouring to follow the careful rule of thumb laid down for her, and unutterably perplexed at finding it so much at variance with that inner vision to which she believed herself to have no right.
Daughter of Philip and Eleanor Stellenthorpe, and product of their teaching, she found the way of least resistance in allowing herself to shelve the whole question, telling herself that it would certainly be mere folly and vanity to envisage prematurely the possibilities latent in a decision which she might never be called upon to make.
The issues at stake were consequently left to obscure themselves still further while Lily strove to persuade herself of their non-existence, and while the necessity for that decision which she was strenuously unfitting herself to make coherently came nearer to her every day.
The weather had grown crisp and cool long before Nicholas Aubray's affairs in Rome were concluded, and he came out to the villa at Genazzano to announce his approaching return to England.
"I shall be very, very sorry to go," he said emotionally. "If anyone had told me, when I first grumbled at coming to Italy, that six weeks later I should actually want to stay on—I shouldn't have believed it."
He looked at Lily as he spoke.
"Aha!" quoth Aunt Clo. "Italy claims us all. I—but I was long ago enslaved, as you perceive. You will return, my friend."
"I hope so. But good-byes are always sad things, I think. One is always sorry, I mean, to say good-bye to a place in which one has been happy." He was again addressing himself to Lily, surprising her, as he occasionally did, by the earnest warmth with which he could deliver himself of a platitude. She hoped that he did not see Aunt Clo wince as she rose from her place.