The sweet and innocent sentimentality of Lady Adela had succeeded in draping the usual beautiful gauze of romance across an episode which, in its time, had been marked by plain and practical precision. As ivy, in the course of years, grows over the bare stone of a ruin, so does romance cover over the hard bare facts of a woman’s past. No matter how stark and cold it may have been, yet, if her nature be loving and soft, its softness will subdue and transfigure the roughnesses of many crude bygone days. By this time Lady Adela believed in her romantic marriage as firmly as she believed in her vicar and her Sovereign.
‘So delightful it was to be with your poor dear father,’ she went on; ‘he was the kindest and most thoughtful of men. He always saw that I had a footstool and a corner seat, and the sun nicely shaded off my eyes. He used to come and sit by me, too, while I was sketching, and read aloud to me until we both fell asleep. I have never liked any one else to read aloud to me since. Mamma was very bustling and worldly, and I was not at all happy with her. But when your poor dear father came and found me, the whole of my life was changed. He was the fairy prince that came to rescue me.’
‘But you told me once, my dear, that my father had once cared very much for someone else.’
‘The world, dear boy, abounds in the most dreadful women. And, indeed, why God made so many women at all—and most of them so plain—nobody has ever yet been able to tell me. There was a horrid creature who made your poor dear father think he was in love with her, as they call it. But, of course, he was nothing of the kind. For as soon as she was safely drowned and out of the way, he forgot all about her, and came and married me, and no two people were ever happier together in the world than he and I. Ours was a case of true love, dear boy, if ever there was one. And I am certain yours will be the same. It is my earnest prayer, dear, and my sure hope. Gundred is the most thoroughly nice, good girl.’
‘And it would not matter if a shade of dullness sometimes seemed to fall between us?’
By this time Lady Adela was, for a wonder, awake to the purport of her son’s questionings. Her excursion into the past had brought her back refreshed into the present.
‘Kingston, dear,’ she answered, ‘what else would you expect from a really nice-minded girl? She is not a married woman yet. The time has not yet come for her to enter fully into your life, or you into hers. Remember how your poor dear father and I used to sit silent together for hours, never saying a word.’
‘Yes; but you did not feel the want of words. I think we sometimes almost do. That makes all the difference.’
‘Words will come, dear—words and all other blessings in their time. Gundred will be the greatest help and comfort to you in your life, and I am sure you love each other tenderly.’
Kingston suddenly began to feel the difficulties of the dialogue. To confide is all very well and comfortable, so long as the confidant is not listening or understanding. The moment he shows signs of noticing what is said, the mortifying indelicacy of the proceeding becomes plain. Finding his mother unwontedly awake to his remarks, Kingston’s sensitiveness drew in its horns.