Three years, was it, since the marriage?  She looked back to her dismay when William brought her the news, though it seemed to her that in some sort she had foreseen it from the moment of his first mention of Kitty Bristol—­with its eager appeal to her kindness, and that new and indefinable something in voice and manner which put her at once on the alert.

Ought she to have opposed it more strongly?  She had, indeed, opposed it; and for a whole wretched week she who had never yet gainsaid him in anything had argued and pleaded with her son, attempting at the same time to bring in his uncles to wrestle with him, seeing that his poor paralyzed father was of no account, and so to make a stubborn family fight of it.  But she had been simply disarmed and beaten down by William’s sweetness, patience, and good-humor.  Never had he been so determined, and never so lovable.

It had been made abundantly plain to her that no wife, however exacting and adorable, should ever rob her, his mother, of one tittle of his old affection—­nay, that, would she only accept Kitty, only take the little forlorn creature into the shelter of her motherly arms, even a more tender and devoted attention than before, on the part of her son, would be surely hers.  He spoke, moreover, the language of sound sense about his proposed bride.  That he was in love, passionately in love, was evident; but there were moments when he could discuss Kitty, her family, her bringing-up, her gifts and defects, with the same cool acumen, the same detachment, apparently, he might have given, say, to the Egyptian or the Balkan problem.  Lady Tranmore was not invited to bow before a divinity; she was asked to accept a very gifted and lovely child, often troublesome and provoking, but full of a glorious promise which only persons of discernment, like herself and Ashe, could fully realize.  He told her, with a laugh, that she could never have behaved even tolerably to a stupid daughter-in-law.  Whereas, let London and society and a few years of love and living do their work, and Kitty would make one of the leading women of her time, as Lady Tranmore had been before her.  “You’ll help her, you’ll train her, you’ll put her in the way,” he had said, kissing his mother’s hand.  “And you’ll see that in the end we shall both of us be so conceited to have had the making of her there’ll be no holding us.”

Well, she had yielded—­of course she had yielded.  She had explained the matter, so far as she could, to the dazed wits of her paralyzed husband.  She had propitiated the family on both sides; she had brought Kitty to stay with her, and had advised on the negotiations which banished Madame d’Estrees from London and the British Isles, in return for a handsome allowance and the payment of her debts; and, finally, she had with difficulty allowed the Grosvilles to provide the trousseau and arrange the marriage from Grosville Park, so eager had she grown in her accepted task.