"And, Josephine, you are of age; you are your own mistress; you have a right to marry whom you please: and, sooner or later, you will certainly marry Camille.

I doubt whether even our mother could prevail on you to refuse him altogether.
So it is but a question of time, and of giving our mother pain, or sparing her pain.

Dear mamma is old; she is prejudiced.

Why shock her prejudices?
She could not be brought to understand the case: these things never happened in her day.

Everything seems to have gone by rule then.