“By all means write to him,” said Emily, as calmly as she could.
“Come!” said Mrs. Lanier to her children, in a freezing tone.
After ceremonious farewells they all left, Cecil last. He turned in the doorway, but Emily was not looking at him. She was already absorbed in the letter she was going to write to Denis.
As soon as the door closed after them, she sat down at the desk, to put down on paper all her burning indignation and resentment. She wrote seven pages at lightning speed. Then she began to read over what she had written, and suddenly she broke into tears.
“No, I can’t!” she sobbed. “Poor Denis! They’re his own people. I can’t say all that to him. Oh, poor Denis!”
So in the end, after her fit of weeping had subsided, she wrote another letter—a cheerful, airy little letter. Part of it was:
Your mother seems to think I’m a flighty young thing. She wants me to come and live in the hotel with her—so that she can keep an eye on me, I suppose; but I’m going to stay here, in the place you and I picked out together. I don’t imagine you’ll be much worried by any tales of my awfulness, will you, Denny?
And then, moved by an honest and generous impulse to make her Denis happy, she added:
The trouble is that your mother doesn’t quite understand my barbarous American ways yet. Perhaps I don’t understand her very well, either; but we shall in time, I’m sure, Denny. Don’t worry about it!
She went to bed happier after that. As for her husband being in the least troubled by any tales of her going out with young men, that was simply absurd. He trusted her just as she trusted him.