Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/329

Rh for Lily herself, so much more, she thinks the occasion great.'

Lady Champer mused. 'If you hadn't her consent I could understand it. But from the moment she thinks the girl good enough for you to marry'

'Ah, she doesn't!' the Prince gloomily interposed. 'However,' he explained, 'she accepts her because there are reasons—my own feeling, now so my very life, don't you see? But it isn't quite open arms. All the same, as I tell Lily, the arms would open.'

'If she'd make the first step? Hum!' said Lady Champer, not without the note of grimness. 'She'll be obstinate.'

The young man, with a melancholy eye, quite coincided. 'She'll be obstinate.'

'So that I strongly recommend you to manage it,' his friend went on after a pause. 'It strikes me that if the Princess can't do it for Lily she might at least do it for you. Any girl you marry becomes thereby somebody.'

'Of course—doesn't she? She certainly ought to do it for me. I'm after all the head of the house.'

'Well, then, make her!' said Lady Champer a little impatiently.

'I will. Mamma adores me, and I adore her.'

'And you adore Lily, and Lily adores you—therefore everybody adores everybody, especially as I adore you both. With so much adoration all round, therefore, things ought to march.'

'They shall!' the young man declared with spirit. 'I adore you, too—you don't mention that; for you help me immensely. But what do you suppose she'll do if she doesn't?'

The agitation already visible in him ministered a little to vagueness; but his friend after an instant disembroiled it. 'What do I suppose Lily will do if your mother remains stiff?' Lady Champer faltered, but she let him have it. 'She'll break.'