It behoved them to enjoy it while permitted to do so.
Had she known the recent causes of trouble which weighed upon her parents, Emily would scarcely have been able to still keep her secret from them.

The anxiety upon her father's face and her mother's ceaseless complaining were too familiar to suggest anything unusual.

She had come home with the resolve to maintain silence, if only because her marriage seemed remote and contingent upon many circumstances; and other reasons had manifested themselves to her even before Wilfrid's visit.

At any time she would find a difficulty in speaking upon such a subject with her mother; strange though it may sound, the intimacy between them was not near enough to encourage such a disclosure, with all the explanations it would involve.

Nor yet to her father would she willingly speak of what had happened, until it became necessary to do so.