So, perforce, our hero could only have an audience with his lady.
The same glossing over of unpalatable truths--the same quiet-breathing counsel--the same tranquil sort of hopefulness--fully satisfied the lover that his cause was gained.

How could he think otherwise?
In the father's absence, he had broached that mighty topic to the mother, who even now hailed him as her son, and promised him his father's favour.
What could be more delicious than all this?
and what more honourable, while prudent, too, and filial, than to acquiesce in Lady Dillaway's fears about her husband's nervousness at the sight of one who was to take from him an only and beloved daughter?
It was delicacy itself--charming; and Henry determined to make his presence, for the first few days, as scarce as possible in the sight of that affectionate father.
And thus it came to pass that two open and most honourable minds, pledged to heartiest love, could not find one speck of sin in loving on clandestinely.

Nay, was it clandestine at all?
Is it, then, merely a legal fiction, and not a religious truth, that husband and wife are one?
and is it not quite as much a matrimonial as a moral one that father and mother are so too?
Was it not decidedly enough to have spoken to the latter, especially when she undertook to answer for the former?
Sir Thomas was a man engrossed in business; and, doubtless, left such affairs of the Heart to the kinder keeping of Lady Dillaway.

No; there was nothing secret nor clandestine in the matter; and I entirely absolve both Henry and Maria.

They could not well have acted otherwise if any harm should come to it, the mother is to blame.
Lady Dillaway, without doubt, should have known her husband better; but her tranquil love of our dear Maria seemed to have infatuated her into simply believing--what she so much wished--her happiness secure.