“As they are, as they have always been.”
“Well, my dear,” said Mr. Russell Penton, with a shrug of his shoulders, “I have always said it was your affair and not mine.”
“You never said that you disapproved. You have heard all the conversation that has gone on about it, and yet you have never said a word. How was I to know that you disapproved?”
“I don’t disapprove. It is a question between you and Sir Walter and your relations. It would not become me to thrust in my opinion one way or the other.”
Tears came into Mrs. Penton’s eyes. “When you say such things, Gerald, you make me feel as if I were no true wife to you.”
“Yes, you are my true wife, and a very dear one,” he said, after a momentary pause, without effusion, but with serious kindness. “But we knew, Alicia, when we married, that the position was different from that of most husbands and wives. I am a sort of Prince Consort, to advise and stand by you when I can; but it is my best policy, for my own self-respect as well as your comfort, not to interfere.”
“The Prince Consort was not like that,” she said; “he was the inspiration of everything. It was not in the nature of things that anything could be done or thought of without him.”
“I have not that self-abnegation,” he said; “there is but one like that in a generation; besides, my dear, you are not the queen. You must defer to another’s guidance. What is settled between Sir Walter and you is for me sacred. I make any little observations that occur to me, but not in the way of advice. For example, I permit myself to say that it is hard on your cousin, because I think you don’t quite appreciate the hardship on his side—not to prevent you carrying out your own purpose, which I don’t doubt is good and very likely the best.”
She shook her head doubtfully. “You are very kind and very tolerant, Gerald, but all you say makes me see that you would not have done this had you been in my place.”
He paused a little before he replied.