"Don't interrupt so foolishly. Where was I? Oh yes--'Young people must
decide for themselves. I know that Lucy likes your son, because she
tells me everything, and she wrote to me from Rome when he asked her
first.' No, I'll cross that last bit out--it looks patronizing. I'll
stop at 'because she tells me everything.' Or shall I cross that out,
too?"

"Cross it out, too," said Freddy.

Mrs. Honeychurch left it in.

"Then the whole thing runs: 'Dear Mrs. Vyse.--Cecil has just asked my
permission about it, and I should be delighted if Lucy wishes it, and
I have told Lucy so. But Lucy seems very uncertain, and in these days
young people must decide for themselves. I know that Lucy likes your
son, because she tells me everything. But I do not know--'"

"Look out!" cried Freddy.

The curtains parted.

Cecil's first movement was one of irritation. He couldn't bear the
Honeychurch habit of sitting in the dark to save the furniture.
Instinctively he give the curtains a twitch, and sent them swinging down
their poles. Light entered. There was revealed a terrace, such as is
owned by many villas with trees each side of it, and on it a little
rustic seat, and two flower-beds. But it was transfigured by the view
beyond, for Windy Corner was built on the range that overlooks the
Sussex Weald. Lucy, who was in the little seat, seemed on the edge of a
green magic carpet which hovered in the air above the tremulous world.

Cecil entered.

Appearing thus late in the story, Cecil must be at once described. He
was medieval. Like a Gothic statue. Tall and refined, with shoulders
that seemed braced square by an effort of the will, and a head that
was tilted a little higher than the usual level of vision, he resembled
those fastidious saints who guard the portals of a French cathedral.
Well educated, well endowed, and not deficient physically, he
remained in the grip of a certain devil whom the modern world knows
as self-consciousness, and whom the medieval, with dimmer vision,
worshipped as asceticism. A Gothic statue implies celibacy, just as
a Greek statue implies fruition, and perhaps this was what Mr. Beebe
meant. And Freddy, who ignored history and art, perhaps meant the same
when he failed to imagine Cecil wearing another fellow's cap.

Mrs. Honeychurch left her letter on the writing table and moved towards
her young acquaintance.

"Oh, Cecil!" she exclaimed--"oh, Cecil, do tell me!"

"I promessi sposi," said he.

They