“And because she’s fun and because Della is fun, Matthew is tied to her for the rest of his life and poor Walter at twenty-one is tied to his Della.”
“But Matthew and Walter are happy.”
“They shouldn’t be happy like that! It’s unworthy!”
Mrs. Warner stood up. “We’ve talked a lot and I’m not convincing you. Perhaps I won’t ever convince you that I’m right. You’re strong, Cecily. You don’t know yet how strong. But when you were a little thing I could see the will in you, underneath the dreaming and the softness. I think now that your father’s laxities have turned in you to rigors. Just now you’re tired and upset by your problems and your household and inclined to group all your troubles into a very destructive point of view. You mustn’t. Walter is married. Gerald writes that he thinks it is all right. He likes Della, too. His father and I want to bring Walter home and to make the most of the situation. If Della is possible material to form into the sort of woman we would like to see Walter have for a wife, it is our privilege to do it. Your example will be necessary and helpful. You’re young, and you’re a happy, married woman.”
She smiled at Cecily and Cecily smiled back through a mist of tears.
“Please help me with Della by being tolerant of her. Think what it will mean to Walter to have his mistake, if it is a mistake, turned to good account—to have us receive his wife instead of being hard on her.”
“You’re so fine and wise and beautiful,” sighed Cecily. “I am foolish; haunted by chimeras. But I feel so glad, mother, to have said it all.”
“It isn’t ended in the saying. But it has helped us both to have talked a little. Shall we go to see the babies before I go?”
They were themselves again—the beautiful, passive woman and the lovely, eager girl, hiding again their depths and the disturbances in them. Mrs. Warner smoothed over the surface as well as the depths. She sent her housemaid to stay with the children and insisted that Cecily and Dick come to her house for dinner, where the case of Walter and Della was discussed and so much the best made of it that the tragic part was fairly smothered in hopes.
Three weeks later, after a wedding trip financed by his father, Walter brought Della home. The family in Carrington were thoroughly adjusted to the blow by that time and a few newspaper notices and careful statements of Mrs. Warner and Cecily had made it clear to their friends and acquaintances that Walter was not to return as a prodigal, but to a very genuine welcome. Yet at the first glance at Della, Cecily felt her heart sink.