Yes, perhaps she was altogether wrong; a year ago, had Peggy been compelled to forecast the future as she saw it then, it would have been a very different future to that which was now present, and to the promise of the present. The two had spent six months at Mannington alone, and the upshot was this mutual devotion. The disruption of age which, according to the measure of years, existed between them, had shown no sign of wider tearing. Indeed, instead, Hugh had grown so much more manly, so much less boyish, while, if anything Edith had grown younger. Instead of her acquiescence in the minor joys of life, the pleasure of seed-time and flower, the pleasure in the river and the downs, the pleasure in the microscopic intrigues of Mannington, which a year ago had been sufficient to enable her to look forward to a quiet, uneventful future which should still be full of the appropriate enjoyments of middle-age, she had recaptured youth. All the tenderness for green and living things (in which class, it must be feared, Peggy put Canon Alington, his wife, Perpetua, and Ambrose) was still there, but love had come, too--fresh, seething, effervescent love. And on Hugh’s side there was no less. He, too, cursing at his blind selfishness, had gone down in mid-season to Mannington because Edith was tired.
“Bless him!” said Peggy, and in the same breath she explained to some Serene Transparency that her brother-in-law was not going to sing, unfortunately, because among other reasons he did not happen to be present.
Peggy had done this sort of thing--standing, that is to say, at the top of a staircase, while names were shouted out to her--so often that the mere mechanism of “receiving” occupied her thoughts very little, and her real thinking self was left free to pursue the windings of its ways unhindered.
There were many things about Hugh and Edith that seemed to her to be matters for that pleasant smile which was so often on her face. The year, she allowed, did not seem to have emphasised the difference of their age, but rather to have diminished it. They were devoted to each other, and, please God, before many weeks were over Edith would see her husband with her first-born in his arms. Yet her shrewdness was not quite content: it was like some wise old hound of the hearth that is restless, sometimes pricking an uneasy ear, sometimes looking out with a whine at the gathering dusk. But she knew the cause of her uneasiness, and surely it was a very little thing, for it was only that Edith had produced the effect on Hugh of being indefatigable, whereas in reality she was very tired. She was keeping it up; she was feeling her age while she was ceaseless and successful in her efforts to conceal it from him. Did she, then, fear exactly what had prompted Peggy to dissuade her from this marriage? The year that had gone had brought great happiness to both, the year to come might bring more. But would it bring more of this, this difficulty which must grow greater with years?