The reason for Grafton's going up to London that day was that another of his sisters-in-law had taken a hand in the affair. Lady Handsworth, under whose wing Beatrix had enjoyed her London gaieties, had written to him to say that it was very important that she should see him. She should be passing through on such and such a day, and would he please come and lunch with her without fail. She had something very important, underlined, to say, which she couldn't write. She didn't want merely to expostulate with him, or to give him advice, which she knew he wouldn't take. As he had allowed her to look after Beatrix, and take a mother's place towards her, she felt that she had a right to a say in the matter of her marriage; so she hoped he wouldn't disappoint her; she didn't want to act in any way apart from him.

There was a veiled threat in this paragraph. There was always that feeling in his mind that something might be done behind his back by some kind sympathiser with Beatrix. Besides, he did owe something to Lady Handsworth. She played in some sort a mother's part towards Beatrix. To her, if to anybody, he had relegated the duty of watching any movement in the marriage mart of Mayfair, and it was due to her that he should justify himself in his objections to a match that she evidently thought to be a suitable one. They all thought that. Unless he could justify himself he would remain to them as a mere figure of prejudice and unreason.

Lady Handsworth was a good deal older than Lady Grafton, and her manners were not so unbending. But she had a kind heart beneath her stately exterior, and had shown it to Beatrix. She had daughters of her own, and it was to be supposed that she wished to marry them off. They were not nearly so attractive as the Grafton girls whom she had successively chaperoned. But she had made no differences between them, and both Caroline and Beatrix were fond of her.

Part of the big house in Hill Street had been opened up for a few days. Lord Handsworth was in London, and two of the girls were with their mother, but Grafton lunched alone with his sister-in-law, and the servants only came in at the necessary intervals.

She wanted, of course, to know the whys and wherefores of what she evidently considered an unreasonable action on his part, and he resigned himself to going over the ground again. "I can't think why you and Mary don't see it as I do," he said when he had done so. "You're neither of you women who think that money and position are the only things that would matter, and you, at any rate, can't think that it's going to spoil B's life not to marry a man she's fallen in love with at eighteen."

"I'm not sure that that isn't more important than you think, George," she said. "Of course she'll get over it, and, of course, she'll marry somebody else, if she doesn't marry him. But there's nothing quite like the first love, for a girl, especially when she's like B, who has never thought about it, as most girls do, and it has come as a sort of revelation to her."

Grafton felt some surprise at the expression of this view from her. "Yes, if she had fallen in love with the right sort of fellow," he said. "I wish she had, if she has to marry young. Margaret married like that, and she and I were as happy together as two people could be. But a fellow of Lassigny's age, with all that sort of life as his background—taking a sudden fancy to her, and she to him—you're not going to found the happiness Margaret and I had on that, my dear Katherine."

"No two people are alike," said Lady Handsworth; "and you can't tell how any marriage will turn out from that point of view. All that one can say is that a girl ought to have a right to work it out for herself, unless there's a very obvious objection to the man. There isn't here. And you have three daughters, George. You won't be able to pick husbands for all of them that exactly suit your views. You've given me some responsibility in the matter, you know. I own I didn't see this coming on, but if I had I should have thought it was just the right thing. It is as good a match as you could want for any of the girls."

"Oh, a good match! You know I don't care much about that, if it's the right sort of fellow."

"Well, you knew Lassigny. At one time I thought it was quite likely that he would propose for Caroline. You had seen him with her yourself constantly, and never made any objections to him. He had dined with you, and you even asked him down to Abington with us. One would have said that you would have welcomed it. I, at least, would never have supposed that you would treat it as if it were a thing quite out of the question."

"Well, there is something in all that, Katherine. But I suppose the fact is that a woman—especially a woman in the position you've been towards B—is always on the lookout for something to happen between a man and a girl who make friends. I can only tell you that I wasn't. I wouldn't have expected it to come on suddenly like that. I've known all about Caroline and her friendships. I suppose you know that Francis Parry wants to marry her. She told me all about it. She's told me about other proposals she's had. That seems to me the normal course with girls who can tell everything to their father, as mine can to me."

She laughed at him quietly. "Caroline has never been in love," she said, "or anywhere near it. Of course she tells you everything, because she wants an excuse for not doing what she thinks perhaps she ought to do. She puts the responsibility on you. When she does fall in love you will very likely know nothing about it until she tells you just as B did."

He laughed in his turn. "I know Caroline better than you do," he said. "And I thought B was like her. I'm very distressed about the way she's taking this, Katherine. She's a different child altogether. A day or two ago I thought she was beginning to get over it; but she mopes about and is getting thin. She doesn't want to go away either, though there are plenty of people who want her. And between her and me, instead of being what it always has been,—well, she's like a different person. I hardly know her. There has been no time in my life when things have gone so wrong—except when Margaret died. And until this happened we were enjoying ourselves more than ever. You saw how we'd got ourselves into the right sort of life when you came to Abington. It's all changed now."

"Poor George!" she said. "You couldn't expect it to last quite like that at Abington, you know. You should have bought your country house ten years ago, when the girls were only growing up. You can't keep them there indefinitely. As for B, you can change all that trouble for yourself easily enough. I think, in spite of what you say, you must see that there was not a good enough reason for refusing Lassigny for her. Let it come on again and she'll be happy enough; and she'll be to you what she always has been."

"Oh, my dear Katherine, you, and Mary, and everybody else, quite ignore the fact that it is Lassigny who has withdrawn himself. If I wanted him for B, which I certainly don't, how could I get him? You don't propose, I should think, that I should write to him and ask him to reconsider his withdrawal."

"No, but there are other ways. If you were to withdraw your opposition, and it were known to him that you had done so! I think you ought not to make too much of his withdrawal. He had every right to suppose that you would not object to him as a husband for one of the girls. No man could think anything else after he had been treated as you treated him, and his position is good enough for him to consider himself likely to be welcomed as a suitor. He would be, by almost every parent in England. You can't be surprised at his having taken offence. It would be just as difficult for him to recede from the position you forced him into as for you."

He was silent. "I really don't think it's fair on B to leave it like this," she said. "She will get over it, of course; but she will always think that you hastily decided something for her that she ought to have decided for herself."

"Perhaps it was decided too hastily," he said unwillingly. "I should have been satisfied, I think, to have had a delay. I should always have hated the idea, but——"

"Would you consent now to a delay, if he were to come forward again?"

"Oh, my dear Katherine, what are you plotting? Why not let the child get over it, as she will in a few months?"

"You don't yourself think that she'll get over it in a few months, so as to bring her back to you what she was before. I've plotted nothing, George. I should have left it altogether alone, but I have been asked to talk to you. Mme. de Lassigny is in England. She wants to see you about it. That was why I asked you to come up. She is at Claridge's. She would like you to go and see her there this afternoon. Or she would come here."

"Do you know her?"

"No. But Lady Ardrishaig does. They have met. She wrote to me. I think you ought to see her, George. You have admitted that it was all done too hastily, with him. If your objections to him are reasonable you ought to be able to state them so that others can accept them."

"It will be a very disagreeable interview, Katherine."

"It need not be. And you ought not to shirk it on that account."

"I don't want to shirk anything. Very well, I will go and see this good lady. Oh, what a nuisance it all is! I wish we'd never seen the fellow."

The telephone was put into operation, and Grafton went immediately to Claridge's. The Marquise received him in a room full of the flowers and toys with which rich travelling Americans transform their temporary habitations into a semblance of permanence. She was of that American type which coalesces so well with the French aristocracy. Tall and upright, wonderfully preserved as to face and figure; grey hair beautifully dressed; gowned in a way that even a man could recognise as exceptional; rather more jewelled than an Englishwoman would be in the day-time, but not excessively so for essential suitability; vivacious in speech and manner, but with a good deal of the grande dame about her too. The interview was not likely to be a disagreeable one, if she were allowed to conduct it in her own fashion.

She thanked Grafton pleasantly for coming to see her, and then plunged immediately into the middle of things. "You and my son hardly finished your conversation," she said. "I think you slightly annoyed one another, and it was broken off. I hope you will allow me to carry it on a little further on his behalf. And I must tell you, to begin with, Mr. Grafton, that he has not asked me to do so. But we mothers in France love our sons—I am quite French in that respect—and I know he is very unhappy. You must forgive an old woman if she intervenes."

She could not long since have passed sixty, and but for her nearly white hair would not have looked older than Grafton himself. He made some deprecatory murmur, and she proceeded.

"I have long wanted RenÉ to range himself," she said. "He will make a good husband to a girl whom he loves—I can assure you of that, for I know him very well. He loves your little daughter devotedly, Mr. Grafton. Fortunately, I have seen her for myself, once or twice here in London, though I have never spoken to her. I think she is the sweetest thing. I should adore him to marry her. Won't you think better of it, Mr. Grafton? I wouldn't dare to ask you— I have really come to London on purpose to do it—if I weren't sure that you were mistaken about him."

"How am I mistaken about him?" asked Grafton. "I am very English, you know. We have our own ideas about married life. I needn't defend them, but I think they're the best there are. They're different from the French ideas. They're different from your son's ideas. He made that plain, or we shouldn't have parted as we did."

"Well, I am glad you have put it in that direct way," she said. "I have a great deal of sympathy with your ideas; they're not so different from those in which I was brought up. I wasn't brought to Europe to marry a title, as some of our girls are. It was a chance I did so. I was in love with my husband, and my married life was all I could wish for, as long as it lasted. It would be the same, I feel sure, with your daughter."

Grafton smiled at her. "If we are to talk quite directly," he said "—and it's no good talking at all if we don't—I must say that, as far as I can judge, American women are more adaptable than English. They adapt themselves here to our ideas, when they marry Englishmen, and they adapt themselves to Frenchmen, whose ways are different from ours. I don't think an English girl could adapt herself to certain things that are taken for granted in France. I don't think that a girl like mine should be asked to. She wouldn't be prepared for it. It would be a great shock to her if it happened. She would certainly have a right to blame her father if she were made unhappy by it. I don't want my daughters to blame me for anything."

She had kept her eyes steadily fixed on him. "Well, Mr. Grafton," she said, "we won't run away from anything. Can you say of any man, French or English or American, who is rich and lives a life chiefly to amuse himself, that he is always going to remain faithful to his wife? How many young Englishmen of the type that you would be pleased to marry your daughter to could you say it of, for certain?"

"Of a good many. And I should say there wasn't one who wouldn't intend to keep absolutely straight when he fell in love with a girl and wanted to marry her. If he wasn't like that, I think one would know, and feel exactly the same objection as I must admit I feel towards your son."

"Oh, but you do mistake him. It was because you doubted him that he took such offence. As he said to me, it was like saying that your own daughter was not worthy to be loved for all her life."

Grafton felt a sudden spurt of resentment. His voice was not so level as usual as he said: "It's easy enough to put it in that way. He said much the same to me. Of course she's worthy to be loved all her life. Would you guarantee that she always would be?"

There was the merest flicker of her eyelids before she replied: "How could one guarantee any such thing for any man, even for one's own son? All I can tell you is that he will make her a devoted husband, and her chances of happiness are as great with him as if he were an Englishman. I won't say that he has never loved another woman. That would be absurd. What I can say is that he does love no one else, and that he loves her in such a way as to put the thought of other women out of his mind. That is exactly what love that leads to marriage should be, in my opinion. Don't you agree with me, Mr. Grafton?"

"Yes," he said. "It ought to do that."

"And if it does, what more have you a right to ask? Our men are chivalrous. The very fact of his marrying an innocent English girl, who would be hurt by what she had had no experience of would act with my son—or I should think with any gentleman."

"Frenchmen generally marry innocent girls, don't they, Madame?"

"You mean that it doesn't prevent them leaving them afterwards. Well, perhaps not always. But surely, Mr. Grafton, you do ask too much, don't you? If he loves her and she loves him, it isn't reasonable to keep them apart, is it?"

He paused for a moment before asking: "How am I keeping them apart?"

"Would you allow them to come together again?" she asked in her turn.

He stirred uneasily in his chair. The thought of his little B once more living with him moved him. "I think it would be better if they didn't," he said. "But if—after a time——"

"Oh, I don't mean now at once," she said. "Indeed that would be impossible, for I have persuaded him to go to America. He is to start very shortly, and won't be in England again before he goes."

Grafton felt a considerable sense of relief at this statement. "How long is he to be away?" he asked.

"Oh, I hope for the winter, if he amuses himself. But he may want to hunt in England."

"If you told him that he might see her again wouldn't he want to come back? Perhaps he wouldn't want to go. I think I should stipulate, anyhow, that he did go—or at least that he shouldn't see her again, or write to her, say for six months. I think, perhaps, I haven't the right to reject him altogether, on the ground of my objections. But I do feel them strongly. It will be a grief to me if my daughter makes this marriage. I have a right, I think, to make sure that her feeling for him is at least strong enough to stand six months of being parted. If she is the same at the end of it, then perhaps I couldn't hold out. I think the same test might apply to him. It would relieve my fears somewhat for the future, if he still wants to marry her at the end of that time."

"Perhaps he won't, Mr. Grafton," she said, with a slight change of manner. "You may have asked yourself why I should have pleaded with you, as I have done, for permission for my son to pay addresses to your daughter. Though I should be proud of her, and should love her too, it would not be a brilliant match for my son. I might prefer another sort of match for him. As you have said, Americans make good wives for French husbands—perhaps better than English girls. They do not demand so much."

He gathered that she was feeling uneasy at being in the position of asking for what she would have preferred to concede as a favour, and was rather amused at it. "I should have thought it would have suited you much better," he said, with a smile. "Why is it that you should not be satisfied with the unreasonable objections of an Englishman who ought to be pleased at the idea of his daughter marrying your son?"

"Because I don't hold rank to be the chief thing in marriage, any more than you do, Mr. Grafton," she answered him directly. "And money isn't wanted in this case, though more money is always useful in our world. It is just because I want for my son in marriage what you want for your daughter that I should like to see him marry her. It is that and because he loves her in the way that should make a happy marriage, and is very unhappy about her. I did think at first that it would be best that he should get over it, because to tell you the truth I was offended by the way in which you had received him, and didn't see how that could be got over. But I have put my pride in my pocket. Let him go to America, as it has been arranged, and stipulate, if you like, that nothing further shall be done or said, until he comes back again—or for six months. Then, if they are both of the same mind, let us make the best of it, Mr. Grafton, and acknowledge that they are two people who are meant to marry. Won't you have it that way?"

"I won't say no," said Grafton. "But, you know, Madame, you have brought another consideration into the situation. He is to be free, I take it, to pay his addresses to somebody else, if he feels inclined, and that, I suppose, was what you had in your mind when you persuaded him to go to America. It's only because I hate seeing my little daughter unhappy that I am giving way. If he changes his mind, during the next six months, and she doesn't——"

"She will be more unhappy than ever, I suppose. Yes, there is that risk. It happens always when two people are kept apart in the hope of one of them changing their mind."

He laughed, and rose to take his farewell. "What I shall tell my daughter is that she must consider it over for the present," he said. "But if he makes an offer for her again next year, I shall reconsider it."

"I don't think you need do more, Mr. Grafton," she said.

Caroline, only, met her father at the station. He was disappointed that Beatrix hadn't come. His mind had been lighter about her than for some time, as he had travelled down. It had been greatly disturbing him to be at issue with this much-loved child of his, and to lose from her all the pretty ways of affection that had so sweetened his life. He knew that he had given way chiefly because the results of his holding out against her were hardly supportable to himself. She had the 'pull' over him, as the one who loves least always has in such a contest. His weapons were weak in his hands. But he did not mind much; for there was the prospect of getting back again to happy relations, and that counted for more than anything. She would be grateful to him, and give him her love again.

He could not have felt quite like this about it if he had given in entirely because he wanted to please Beatrix. It was necessary that he should find some other justification for himself; and it was not difficult to find. If Lassigny still wanted to marry her after six months' parting and she wanted it too, it would be unreasonable to object on the grounds that he had taken. His dislike of Lassigny, which had not existed at all before, had died down. Seen in the light of his mother's faith in him, he was a figure more allied to the suitor that Grafton would have accepted without such questionings as his foreign nationality had evoked. For the time being he could think of an eventual marriage without shrinking. But this state of mind was probably helped by the consideration that anything might happen in six months. It was at least a respite. There was no need to worry now about what should come after.

He told Caroline what had happened as they drove home together. He had said nothing beforehand of his going up to see Lady Handsworth. He had not wanted again to have Beatrix's hopes raised, and to suffer the chill of her disappointment.

"Everybody seems to think that I'm most unreasonable," he said. "I'm half-beginning to think so myself. I suppose B will forget all about what's been happening lately when I tell her, won't she?"

"Oh, yes, darling," said Caroline. "She loves you awfully. She'll be just what she always has been to you."

"Oh well, that's all right then. I shall be precious glad to go back to the old state of things. I may have been unfair to her in one or two points, but I'm sure I've been right in the main. If there's to be nothing settled for six months that's all I can ask. I think I should have been satisfied with that at first. At least I should have accepted it."

"So would B. She said so."

"Yes, I know. You told me. How jolly it is to get down here after London! We're all going to enjoy ourselves at Abington again now. Let's get up early to-morrow, shall we?"

The early risings had been given up of late. The edge of pleasure in the new life and the new place had become blunted. But it all seemed bright again now, and the country was enchanting in the yellow evening light.

So was the house when they reached it. September was half-way through, and though the days were warm and sunny, there was a chill when the sun had gone down. A wood fire was lit in the long gallery, which with curtains closed, lamps and candles lit, and masses of autumn flowers everywhere about it, was even more welcoming than in its summer state.

Grafton sat there with Beatrix on a sofa before the fire. Her head was on his shoulder and his arm was round her. She cried a little when he told her, but she was very happy. She was also very merry throughout the evening, but alternated her bursts of merriment with the clinging tenderness towards him which he had so missed of late. It was only when he was alone in his room that a cold waft came over his new-found contentment. He had forgotten all about Lassigny for the time being. Could he ever accept Lassigny as part of all this happy intimate family life? He would have to, if Beatrix were to get what she wanted, and were still to remain allied to it. But Lassigny hardly seemed to fit in, even at his best. He was all very well as a guest; but when they were alone together, as they had been this evening—— Oh, if only B could see her mistake!