"Lily is as yet a child," said Miss Stellenthorpe, unconsciously quoting her brother.
"I'm glad she has a good husband," said Ethel decisively.
To Ethel's way of thinking, all husbands were good husbands, provided that they were not actively bad husbands.
"Lily is very sweet and gentle," she said, "and very easily influenced. It's a very good thing she married young."
"Easily influenced? Ah! Well, it's at all events a likeable weakness——" graciously returned Aunt Clo, merely resting upon that pleasant sense of superiority engendered by the contemplation of any weakness unshared by the contemplative one.
"I cannot wait to see her, hêlas! There are other claims upon me. Sad, sad, lost ones, groping through a labyrinth," said Aunt Clo darkly.
To the rescue of these straying souls she accordingly hastened.
Lily, settling down into her new life, felt a shamefaced satisfaction that she should escape the slight strain entailed by the effort of living up to Aunt Clotilde's exalted ideals.
It was easier to choose furniture for the drawing-room without the terrible certainty that one's writing-table would be found Philistine, one's colour scheme crude.
Lily enjoyed arranging her possessions, but she was both inexperienced and diffident, and it was a relief to find that Nicholas had eclectic and cultivated tastes.