In the morning Lily came to breakfast as blooming as a rose. The sense
of her simple, fresh, wholesome loveliness might have pierced even the
indifference of a man to whom there was but one pretty woman in the
world, and who had lived since their marriage as if his wife had
absorbed her whole sex into herself: this deep, unconscious constancy
was a noble trait in him, but it is not so rare in men as women would
have us believe. For Elmore, Miss Mayhew merely pervaded the place in
her finer way, as the flowers on the table did, as the sweet butter, the
new eggs, and the morning's French bread did; he looked at her with a
perfectly serene ignorance of her piquant face, her beautiful eyes and
abundant hair, and her trim, straight figure. But his wife exulted in
every particular of her charm, and was as generously glad of it as if it
were her own; as women are when they are sure that the charm of others
has no designs. The ladies twittered and laughed together, and as he
was a man without small talk, he soon dropped out of the conversation
into a reverie, from which he found himself presently extracted by a
question from his wife.
"We had better go in a gondola, hadn't we, Owen?" She seemed to be, as
she put this, trying to look something into him. He, on his part, tried
his best to make out her meaning, but failed.