Quentillian paused almost without meaning to, on a pronouncement that would certainly have met with drastic and emphatic interruption from Canon Morchard.
Lucilla, however, received it unmoved.
“Don’t you think so?” said Quentillian, slightly disappointed.
“Yes.”
“But will Valeria do it? Won’t her strange ideas of filial duty interfere? I am absolutely convinced that one of the principal reasons for her ever becoming engaged to me, was her wish to please her father.”
“I don’t think it was altogether that, Owen. But you did ask her to marry you at a time when she was just beginning to realize that the sort of life she led before the war wasn’t going to be enough for her.”
“Need it have taken a European war to make her see that?”
The smile that Lucilla turned upon his petulance was disarming.
“Don’t be so cross, Owen.”
She might have been talking to a little boy.