Madame Legier wrote two letters--one to Léon in which she said if he was
sure of getting £500 a year, and the girl was healthy--and agreed to
bring up the children as Catholics--she supposed it was better to close
with it, though Heaven knew how they would fit things in, the English
temperament being as stubborn as wood, and his father most
unaccommodating when he was there; and another letter to Rose in which
she welcomed her into the family and said what confidence she had in
Léon’s choice, and how she and her husband looked forward to the
brightening of their future lives by the sight of their children’s
happiness.
Monsieur Legier wrote a third letter which Mrs. Pinsent translated to
her husband. He said something about a lawyer in it, but Mr. Pinsent
said nothing would induce him to see a French lawyer, English ones were
bad enough.
Rose didn’t give anybody time to do much more. She announced that she
wanted to be married at once and spend her honeymoon at Capri.
She could buy what she needed in Rome and finish getting her trousseau
together in Paris.
She had set her heart on going to Capri for her honeymoon and there
wasn’t any use anybody saying anything.
She didn’t even pay much attention to Léon, who ventured on one occasion
to wonder if Capri was very gay?
“We sha’n’t want to be gay,” Rose said a little soberly. “We shall just
be perfectly happy.”
Léon said no more. Of course he expected to be happy, but he had never
in his life been happy when he wasn’t a little gay.
Rose saw very little of Léon during their brief engagement. They were
both immersed in preparations for the wedding, but the little she saw
was like the vision of a Fairy Prince.
He was gallant, delicate and intent. Nothing about Rose escaped him. He
knew with a marvelous tact from moment to moment what would please her
best.
It was (but of course Rose didn’t know this) the correct attitude for a
Frenchman engaged to be married.
As the marriage approached, Mrs. Pinsent had moments of secret doubt.
She knew it was very silly of her, but Rose was her youngest child, and
marriage by two consuls and a Cardinal wasn’t at all like being married
properly in your own church at home.
She went so far one evening as to go into Rose’s bedroom under the
pretext of borrowing her hairbrush, just to see if her child was quite
happy. Mrs. Pinsent’s hair was long and thick like Rose’s, it had been
the same color when she was Rose’s age. She sat in an armchair by the
bed and thought that Rose, whose hair was done in two long plaits,
looked terribly like she used to look when she was ten years old.
“My dear,” she said, “I like Léon so much.” Rose smiled and blushed and
snuggled further into the rather hard second pillow reluctantly conceded
to her by the Hotel le Roy.
“Yes, Mamma, I know,” she said, “and he loves you--isn’t it nice?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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