But this was Denis’s mother, a person of supreme importance in his world. He couldn’t help but be influenced by her opinion; so her opinion must be favorable.
“Is it—do you find it comfortable here?” Emily asked politely.
Mrs. Lanier seemed surprised that any one should imagine her comfortable here. She smiled wearily.
“I’ve been in the States before,” she answered. “I dare say I shall do very well for a time. I’m sorry, though, to hear that you and Denis are going to live about in hotels.”
“But we’re not! We’re going to start housekeeping just as soon as he—”
“Denis is very domestic, like his father. I’m sorry to think of his having to live about in hotels,” Mrs. Lanier went on. “However—”
She preceded Emily down a corridor. At the end she opened a door, and they entered a small sitting room.
“We must have a little chat,” said Mrs. Lanier, “before Cecil comes in.”
She took up a packet of letters from the console near her, and began looking over them.
“Let me see,” she said. “Ah, here it is! ‘She is only twenty, and very young for her age,’ Denis tells me. Are you really? And then he says—let me see—‘a remarkably sweet disposition.’ That’s very nice, I’m sure. ‘Her people are thoroughly respectable, decent people, but [Pg 162]they’—well, no matter. ‘She is a very clever and amusing girl.’”