“But you should learn,” she said, “to let your desires be governed by your reason. It is a foolish thing to want what you may not have.”
“You think that it is like that with me?” he asked.
“All the world knows,” she answered, “that you are in love with Wilhelmina!”
“One must be in love with someone,” he remarked.
“Naturally! But why choose a woman who is head and ears in love with some one else?”
“It cannot last,” he answered, “she has married him.”
Lady Peggy reached out for a cushion and placed it behind her head.
“That certainly would seem hopeful in the case of an ordinary woman—myself, for instance,” she said. “But Wilhelmina is not an ordinary woman. She always would do things differently from other people. I don’t want to make you more unhappy than you are, but I honestly believe that Wilhelmina is going to set a new fashion. She is going to try and re-establish the life domestic amongst the upper classes.”
“She always was such a reformer,” he sighed.