All sorts of ideas which she would have laughed at
in her own youth flitted through her brain from morning till night. Her
fancy built up a life for her eldest son, which she knew to be far from
the possibility of realisation, but which had for her a new and strange
attraction.
She planned for him the most unimaginable happiness, of a kind which
would perhaps have hardly satisfied his more modern instincts. She saw a
maiden of indescribable beauty, brought up in unapproachable
perfections, guarded by the all but insuperable jealousy of an ideal
home. Orsino was to love this vision, and none other, from the first
meeting to the term of his natural life, and was to win her in the face
or difficulties such as would have made even Giovanni, the incomparable,
look grave. This radiant creature was also to love Orsino, as a matter
of course, with a love vastly more angelic than human, but not hastily
nor thoughtlessly, lest Orsino should get her too easily and not value
her as he ought. Then she saw the two betrothed, side by side on shady
lawns and moonlit terraces, in a perfectly beautiful intimacy such as
they would certainly never enjoy in the existing conditions of their own
society.
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