No June it's not ok! Because if you tell her you will get to kiss her again quicker!!
Also a more on Tea cultivation.
I had assumed that Violet was cultivating tea in India to sell to Hong Kong (as was done at the time) but the line about tea plantations in the suburbs makes me think the author thinks we grew tea an masse at the time.
Incidentally this isn't impossible tea can be grown in Britain, and there is a plantation in Cornwall and one in Scotland. These are very modern developments though, so for 1850-ish...
I suppose we can place the mansion in that Cornish rural idyll (as warm as it gets on this God forsaken rock) and make Violet the world's best tea botanist.