"How unfortunately rarely one might say otherwise," Benevenuta observes, as Husband trots under the table to investigate her boy, nudging him with an investigatorial nose. "A success in the end?"

Inasmuch as it could be considered successful, in dealing with such people, she supposes. Nerva is one given to brooding, in her observation and estimation, and she seems rather uncharacteristically warm overall - it could not have been such a disaster.