m afraid she won't be happy. She has always had such
very _exalte_ ideas. She is not in the least the girl of the period. Of
course she was taken by his picturesque face and his admirable manners.
His manners are really wonderful in these days, when our men have none
at all; and he has charmingly caressing and deferential ways, which win
even me. I cannot wonder at her, poor child, but I am afraid: candidly,
I am afraid! He makes all our men look like ploughboys. And it was all
done in such tremendous haste that she had no time to reason or reflect;
and I don't think they have said two serious words to each other. If
only it had been dear, good Hampshire, whom we have known all our lives,
and whose lands march with ours! But that was too good to be, I suppose,
and there was no positive objection we could raise to San Zenone. We
could not refuse his proposals because he is too good-looking, isn't an
Englishman, and has a mother who is reputed _maitresse femme_. Gladys
writes from Coombe as from the seventh heaven. They have been married
three days! But I fear she will have trouble before her. I fear he is
weak and unstable, and will not back her up among his own people when
she goes among them; and though, nowadays, a man and woman, once wedded,
see so little of each other, Gladys is not quite of the time in her
notions. She will take it all very seriously, poor child, and expect the
idyl to be prolonged over the honeymoon. And she is very English in her
tastes, and has been so very little out of England. However, every girl
in London is envying her. It is only her father and I who see these
little black specks on the fruit she has plucked. They are gone to
Coombe by her wish. I think it would have been wiser not to subject an
Italian to such an ordeal as a wet English June in an utterly lonely
country house. You know, even Englishmen, who can always find such
refuge and comfort in prize pigs and straw-yards and unusually big
mangolds, get bored if they are in the country when there is nothing to
shoot; and Englishmen are used to being drenched to the skin every time
they move out. He is not. Lord Cowes says love is like a cotton
frock,--very pretty as long as the sun shines, but it won't stand a
wetting. I wish you had been here: Gladys looked quite lovely. Cardinal
Manning most kindly relented, and the whole thing went off very well. Of
the San Zenone family, there was only present Don Fabrizio, the younger
son, a very g