Lily read the letter through for the third time. Dorothy had always been inarticulate, but it seemed now that she was suddenly able to express herself. However colloquial the words that she might have selected, Lily felt that they somehow conveyed very vividly an impression of sudden and overwhelming happiness.
Lily, in a strange and confused way, felt as though, through Dorothy, she saw exemplified the brilliant descriptions given to her of the joys of early love, descriptions which, when she had tried to apply them to herself, had seemed extraordinarily unreal. Her will had repeated the assurances of her happiness, but her emotions had remained unstirred.
She told Nicholas the news that her letters had contained.
"By Jove! That's excellent. I hope he's a good fellow. When are they going to be married?"
"She doesn't say, but Cousin Ethel evidently thinks it will be before next year, when his regiment goes to India."
"Splendid! Funny you and she should be married more or less at the same time, eh? You'll be able to tell her all about the management of a husband—an old married woman like you." His laughter, as always, prolonged itself considerably beyond the limits of his wife's very faint amusement at the jest.
"Give her my best congratulations, Lily. I'm so glad about it. She's a first-rate girl, isn't she? I should like her immensely even if she wasn't a great friend of my little wife's. Captain Durand is in luck, isn't he?"
Lily assented eagerly.
"Don't you think Dorothy is pretty, Nicholas?"
"I know somebody who's much prettier." He laughed and kissed her.