“Well, isn’t that enough for any man?” Teresa asked, with a show of conviction.
“It will not be enough for Mr Wilbraham.”
“That’s for him to judge. Why do you scold me? I’m doing nothing.”
“I should have said you were spending your energies in making ways smooth and pleasant,” her grandmother added after a momentary hesitation. “Well?”
“Well, I have a theory that Love cuts his own paths when he wants them.”
“Oh, granny,” protested Teresa, “but you—you are so romantic! Things have changed.”
“No, no, they are eternally the same,” said Mrs Brodrick, with a smile at her own failure.
After all, Teresa was not doing her justice, for her fears chiefly centred on Sylvia. Wilbraham, she agreed in her mind, could take care of himself, but if Sylvia suffered an acute sorrow, was her character strong enough to keep its equilibrium? She doubted. And she only faintly hoped that what she had said might influence Teresa, for, though it cost her something to offer advice she had very little belief in its being taken.
She began to wish they were out of Rome.
A month had passed since the day at Ostia; Wilbraham lingered, and had even arrived at the point of acknowledging to himself that he was lingering, which is a long step for a cautious man. It was true that other friends of his and of Mrs Brodrick’s had arrived, and were in a hotel not far from the Porta Pinciana. Their advent seemed to fling him yet more comfortably with his first acquaintances, for a second man put him at his ease. Moreover, Colonel and Mrs Maxwell wanted to see everything, since, although she had been born in Italy, he had never been in Rome. Teresa made herself his guide, and Sylvia fell naturally to Wilbraham. Teresa was still on the watch to cover blunders, but they had passed the stage in which she had been afraid to leave her alone with him. She even doubted whether he were alive to the difference in the conversation between Sylvia and Mrs Maxwell, who could talk brilliantly. There she was mistaken. He saw, and, on the whole, thought he preferred simplicity to brilliancy in a woman. He would have resented anything which made him ridiculous; short of that, the girl he married would require few mental gifts.