“As good as gold,” assented Mrs Brodrick hastily.
“But the best of creatures may be the least little bit in the world—tiresome? Oh, don’t let us be quite good ourselves, let us say what is on the tip of our tongues. How can any one look at Sylvia when Teresa is by?”
“When you’re my age,” said the older woman, “you will have given up asking questions.”
“When I’m your age I shall try to answer other people’s,” said Mary, with a laugh. “Do you believe for a moment that it can go on?—particularly when Teresa withdraws, as she must, into the background, and leaves Sylvia to stand alone?”
Our own thoughts are apt to look the uglier, held up by another person, and Mrs Brodrick would have chosen silence. As it was she said quietly:
“Mr Wilbraham is not the man to make mistakes.”
Mary Maxwell laughed shrewdly.
“You mean he’s not the man to acknowledge them. There you’re right. I daresay he will stick to Sylvia rather than own himself in the wrong. Well, perhaps obstinacy has its uses. I wonder what they are talking about now?” she added, wickedly.
At the moment when she asked the question, the two concerned were also climbing steep streets—since at Assisi you must go up or down—stopping every now and then to look through narrow vistas of grey stone houses, towards the fair blue distances which lay beyond. Wilbraham was not so much in love that he had not some uncertainty as to how much he ought to say about it; sometimes, indeed, he felt that he had said but little. Sylvia, however, was quite satisfied. She was not exacting, and she had been brought up in an atmosphere which had given her trustfulness. When Wilbraham had once said he loved her, it would not have occurred to her to doubt the fact.
So, as they went, she babbled cheerfully and disconnectedly, turning to him from time to time the face which invariably gave him a renewed feeling of satisfaction. Had he pulled his own feelings to pieces, he would have realised that his love was not a sweeping force, but, rather, intermittent, moving in jerks, or brightening up now and then like a flame stirred by a sudden current. As it was, he felt quite sufficiently sure of himself to be content.