“That,” he observed in a detached manner, “is a decision which I shall leave entirely to my wife.”
If Mrs. Tregaskis found it necessary to readjust her forces after this, the readjustment was made silently and without delay. But it was very shortly after that, when it only wanted a week to Hazel’s wedding-day, that Rosamund again found Cousin Bertha in the library, struggling with hard, choking sobs. Hazel hung over her, caressing her with most unwonted demonstrativeness and with tears in her own pretty eyes. But that they were tears of the merest surface pity and tenderness was abundantly obvious even without the gently mournful observation which she made to Rosamund that evening.
“Poor mother! I hate to see her minding it so, but you know, Rosamund, I can’t feel as unhappy as I ought.”
“Don’t you wish—sometimes—that you’d waited, as they begged you to? It would have been the same for you in the end.”
“The same for me, and the same for them,” returned Hazel crisply. “They wouldn’t have liked it any better ten years hence—at least mother wouldn’t. I believe daddy’s reconciled already. Mother wants me to be happy, but in her way.”
“Are you really happy, when you know she is miserable?” spoke Rosamund with more curiosity than compassion. Hazel coloured, but faced her cousin with unflinching honesty.
“Yes,” she said, “I am. It’s of no use to pretend, Rosamund. I am happier than I have ever been in my life. Of course, I should have preferred it if everything had been straightforward, and there hadn’t been all this fuss, and having to extort a consent—but it would have been just the same if they hadn’t given it. Do you know, that’s the pathos of it, to my mind—they couldn’t do anything. Guy and I would have married without their consent, just as much as with it.”
“He asked you to, I suppose,” said Rosamund, as though stating a fact.
Hazel pushed her curling tawny hair from her forehead.
“He asked me if I would, if it came to that, and of course I said yes. But we both knew it wouldn’t come to that, and that mother would have to give in. I used to think that if one’s parents forbade a thing, it became impossible ipso facto, but it doesn’t. They just can’t do anything at all.”