Why should not the girl have the man if he were lovable?
And the Duchess referred to her own early days when she had loved, and to the great ruin which had come upon her heart when she had been severed from the man she had loved.

"Not but that it has been all for the best," she had said.

"Not but that Plantagenet has been to me all that a husband should be.

Only if she can be spared what I suffered, let her be spared." Even when these things had been said to her, Mrs.Finn had found herself unable to ask questions.
She could not bring herself to inquire whether the girl had in truth given her heart to this young Tregear.

The one was nineteen and the other as yet but two-and-twenty! But though she asked no questions she almost knew that it must be so.