"My dear child! Of course, there's love and love, you know. Men have their fancies, but it's the woman they want to marry who really counts. Has he ever told you about—about anything of that sort, in his life?"
"He told me he'd never asked anyone to marry him before."
"There!" cried Ethel in a tone of relief. "What more can you want? I think that's marvellous, at his age. And, Lily dear, let me give you a word of advice. You've no mother, poor child! Now that he's so generously and frankly told you that, you'll be content, won't you? I mean, don't go on and on asking him about the time before he knew you. Some girls are so foolish and wreck all their own happiness with that sort of thing. But I don't think you're like that, are you?"
Lily was puzzled, and also rather distressed. Was married life to contain merely a fresh series of those silences and reticences that had made life at home a thing of eternal difficulties?
It did not seem characteristic of Nicholas.
At last she said: "I should like us to tell one another everything, I think, Cousin Ethel."
Mrs. Hardinge burst into a rather nervous laugh.
"Oh, my dear little girl! Now I'm going to talk to you just as though it were Dorothy or Janet. You see, dear, men aren't the same as women and we mustn't expect it. Nicholas is—is a good man, you know, or your father wouldn't let you marry him. But no man can be expected to tell his wife everything, as you call it—especially when there is a difference in age."
Lily began to feel as though they were talking at cross-purposes.
"You must trust your husband, you know, dear," said Cousin Ethel.