‘What is it, my own wife?’ he asked, gazing at her upturned face with the glad content of the readmitted into paradise.
‘Why, look——’ And she gave him the postcard.
He turned a deep red. She took that for modesty, and laughed with pride in him. What he could have done and why he had done it she didn’t know, but she loved him with a positively burning faith.
Stephen, reading the words on the postcard, deduced that the marriage, which he had supposed had taken place a month or six weeks before, had in fact only just done so, for he believed no lasting happiness could be the lot of the ex-Mrs. Cumfrit, and gave her and her unfortunate victim two or three days of it at most before remorse and disillusionment set in. They were evidently at the very beginning of their two or three days when the card was written. He had had no wish at all, he knew, to help his mother-in-law to happiness. Expiation only was what he had had in mind. That expiation should be a happiness-giving process had not occurred to him as possible. And here was Virginia, praising and blessing him; here was this young unsullied spirit once more making him, by her belief and pride in his goodness, feel ashamed of himself. Also, how awkward it was. Why could not Mrs. Cumfrit have announced she was now Monckton in an ordinary manner, without dragging him into it?
‘Let us, my darling,’ he said, not knowing what to say and fervently wishing he really had done something to deserve the look of proud adoration on Virginia’s face, ‘have breakfast. Otherwise it will be cold. And I am as hungry as a——’ he was going to say hunter, but it sounded too unclerical, so he said rector instead; and they both laughed, being in the mood, that happy morning, when one laughs at anything.
She brought his coffee round to him, and stood behind his chair laying her cheek on his head. ‘You’ve got to confess, you know,’ she said, ‘however much you want to hide your light under a bushel. What did you do, Stephen darling, and why have we been so miserable all this time about mother’s marrying, when it was really you who——?’
‘I’ll confess to you, my love, that I did enjoin marriage.’
‘You did? Then why——?’
‘Virginia, love, you trust your husband?’
‘Oh, Stephen—so absolutely!’ she cried, putting her arms round his neck.