"I haven't told her yet," said Julian, easily. "It didn't occur to me to mention it to her first any more than to you. I knew you'd both understand. Obviously it was the one thing I could do. She'll see that, of course."
"I'm different," said Lady Verny, with a twist of her ironic mouth. "I'm your mother. A mother takes what is given; a wife expects all there is to give."
Julian looked a little uncomfortable. Burton, who was a man, and might therefore be assumed to know better than a woman what a woman felt, had come to the same conclusion.
Julian was prepared to give everything he had to Marian—Amberley and all his money and himself. There was something in the marriage service that put it very well, but didn't, as far as he remembered, say anything to include plans.
"I hope she likes Amberley?" he ventured.
Lady Verny filled his cup a second time, and answered tranquilly:
"Marian thinks it a charming little place to run down to for week-ends." Then she added very gently: "This is going to be very hard for Marian, Julian. You'll remember that, won't you, when you tell her?"
"Damnably hard," said Julian under his breath. "Of course I'll remember. I wish to Heaven she'd marry me first. By Jove, I'll make her!"
Lady Verny's lips closed tightly. She wasn't going to tell Julian anything, because she did not believe in telling things to people who will in the course of time find them out for themselves. She knew that Marian would not marry him at a moment's notice. She knew that he was asking Marian already to stand a very serious burden, and she did not think Marian's was the type of love that cares for very serious and unexpected burdens. She gazed at the bushes of blue anchusa; the gardener had planted pink monthly roses a little too thickly among them. She could alter that; she did not think there was anything else she could alter.
Julian strode toward the downs full of seriousness, eagerness, and pride, and in her heart Lady Verny prayed not that God's will might be done, which seemed to her mind superfluous, but that it might as far as possible be made to square with Julian's. She was a wise and even a just woman, but she thought that Providence might be persuaded to stretch a point or two for Julian.