‘You’ve no idea,’ she said aloud, her eyes bright with pride, ‘how wonderful he is.’
(‘Who,’ thought Catherine, ‘could have imagined it. That solemn old Stephen.’)
‘I’m so glad,’ she said aloud, putting her arm round Virginia. ‘You know I used to be afraid—I wasn’t quite sure—whether perhaps the difference in age——’
‘Age!’
Virginia looked down at her mother pityingly. ‘I wish you understood, mother,’ she said gravely, ‘how little age has to do with it so long as people love each other. Why, what can it matter? We never think of it. It simply doesn’t come in. Stephen is Stephen, whatever his age may be. He never, never could be anything else.’
‘No,’ agreed Catherine rather wistfully, for if Stephen could only be something else she might find him easier to talk to.
However, that was neither here nor there. He wasn’t Virginia’s husband in order to talk agreeably to her mother. The great thing was that he succeeded in bringing complete bliss to his wife. How right the child had been to insist on marrying him; how unerring was her instinct. What had she cared for the reasoning of relations, the advice so copiously given not only by Catherine herself, but by various uncles and cousins, both on her father’s and mother’s side? And as for the suggestion that she would look ridiculous going about with a husband old enough to be her father, she had merely smiled gravely at that and not even condescended to answer.
‘I wonder,’ said Catherine, pensively gazing into the fire, her cheek against Virginia’s sleeve, ‘how much happiness has been prevented by fear.’
‘What fear?’
‘Of people—and especially relations. Their opinion.’