“I quite forgot to ask Miss Maitland if she’d like her breakfast sent up to her,” said Lady Lane, as she collected the day’s papers and dropped them into a basket.
“She never eats any—except tea and toast,” Eric answered. “Before you go up, mother, I should like you to tell me candidly what you think of her.”
“She’s very young, of course,” Lady Lane answered deliberately. She was puzzled, for he was dispassionate, and no one else in the house seemed to suspect anything. Eric was grateful to her for cutting all circumlocution. “I like her, Eric, I like her immensely. She’s sweetly pretty; I think she’s intelligent, too... You can’t expect any great experience at that age, but then most girls of the present day are wofully unpractical; she’ll have to learn, like the rest. So far as one can tell on very short acquaintance, she’s a thoroughly nice little girl... I always think a man should try to marry a woman whose experiences are behind and not in front of her. Of course, they’re growing all the time, but, like children, they grow so much more quickly when they’re very young. In that way a man’s in danger of marrying a child and finding soon afterwards that she’s grown into a woman that he doesn’t recognize... Have you known her long, Eric?”
“No. And, while I know her very intimately in some ways, I hardly know her at all in others. That’s why I wanted a general, outside opinion. It’s more than possible, mother, that I may come to you one day and tell you that we’re going to be married.”
Lady Lane nodded and kissed him lightly on the forehead:
“Well, I hope you’ll be very happy, dear Eric.” His mother was delightfully practical and restrained. She looked out on the world with steady eyes, treating emotion as an indecency. Eric wondered why none of her calm nerves had descended to him. “She’s devoted to you, you’ve only to say the word. Up to the present—?”
She paused interrogatively.
“Nothing’s fixed definitely,” Eric answered. “It’s rather hard to explain, but there’s what I suppose you might call “an understanding.” I can tell you this much: we’ve both of us seen that in love it’s possible to be quite certain of yourself and then to find, rather painfully, that you’ve been utterly mistaken. Yes, even at her age, poor child... We’ve both learned the lesson and paid the price; we don’t want to make any more mistakes. I’ve burned my fingers sufficiently to have become very unromantic... Don’t you think we’re right to wait?”
Lady Lane did not know what answer to give. Since Eric had seen the blemishes in one woman, he was looking for them in all; soon he would see nothing else.
“You mustn’t wait too long; that’s the only thing,” she advised him.