"What on earth made you tell your mother that?" I asked, when, years later, Julia described the scene to me. 

"That's exactly what Rex wanted to know. I suppose because I thought it was true. Not literally--though you must remember I was only twenty, and no one really knows the 'facts of life' by being told them--but of course, I didn't mean it was true literally. I didn't know how else to express it. I meant I was much too deep with Rex just to be able to say 'the marriage arranged will not now take place,' and leave it at that. I wanted to be made an honest woman. I've been wanting it ever since--come to think of it."

Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited, 198