Lily herself derived unforeseen excitement and pleasure from all these accessories to her engagement, her father's intense gratification and pride in her, the warmly-worded congratulations that she received, and the admiring welcome that her youth and prettiness met with from the bewildering number of new friends and relations to whom Nicholas presented her, even the trousseau frocks and the jewels and the wedding presents, all gave her a dream-like feeling of astonished delight.
She did not doubt any more whether she was in love. There was a glamour over her days that could only mean happiness, and happiness and love were still, to Lily's way of thinking, synonymous.
Sometimes she realized with surprise how impossible it would be now to disappoint all this kindness, and saw herself as much bound to Nicholas as though she were already married to him. And she felt with a certain joyful astonishment, that any lingering doubt must be dispelled by the discovery that the personality of Nicholas Aubray seemed to be far more in harmony with her own as a lover than as a friend.
XIII
The person of whom Lily seemed to see least during the period of her engagement was the man whom she was to marry.
Jests about placing them beside one another at the many hospitable tables to which they were invited seemed to be inevitable, but each was obviously expected to talk and make acquaintance with the friends or relations of the other.
Everyone congratulated Lily whole-heartedly.
"He's awfully nice, Lily—he's got such a nice twinkle," said Dorothy Hardinge.
Now that Lily was really engaged, with a ring, and presents arriving every day, and a trousseau imminent, Dorothy was full of excitement, and appeared to have forgotten all her previous strictures.