Caroline and her father rode out very early one morning at the beginning of June. One of the habits they had formed was to seize to themselves the delicious freshness of the new day, unspoilt by the smoke and stir of towns.

She and he were alone at the Abbey. After more than a year in which the London house had scarcely been used, they were beginning to discuss the advisability of giving it up altogether. They discussed it now as they rode across the dewy grass of the park, on their way to the high ground which would bring them to their favourite view across miles of southward facing country to the sea.

"You see, darling," Caroline was saying, "we always want to be here when we are there, and we very seldom want to be there when we are here. Beatrix generally stays with Aunt Katharine or Aunt Mary, anyhow, and you like staying at your Club if you have to go up alone. Now that Barbara has gone to Paris the Dragon won't have to be in London to look after her, as we thought she must if she went up for classes."

"And what about you, Cara? You shirked most of your London gaieties last year. Are you going to cut yourself off from them altogether?"

She laughed happily. "Fancy wanting London gaieties when you can have this!" she said. "I sang for joy this morning when I woke up and found myself here instead of in London."

"Yes, that's all very well," he said. "I feel like that myself, though I suppose that at my age no satisfaction is quite as hilarious as it is at yours. But it isn't only the gaieties that you miss by cutting yourself off from London. It's being in the swim. When you've been in the swim as long as I have, you know how much of it is necessary to you and how much isn't. And you don't lose all that you've gained for yourself when you begin to sit lightly to it all. But you have to gain it first."

"I'm not sure that I want to gain more than I have," she said. "I have heaps of friends, and we see a good many of them down here. I like seeing those who really do count in that way; you get to know them better. It's the background of life that I love so in the country. You belong to yourself more. Things come to you and you don't have to go out to find them. I believe you feel that too, Daddy."

"Yes, I do," he said, "more than I should have thought possible a year ago. But still I can't see that it is quite the right thing for you to bury yourself down here entirely."

"Don't you feel that it's nice to have me here to welcome you when you come home?" she asked.

"Oh, my darling," he said, "nothing could be better—for me. It's you I'm thinking of."

Barbara had been sent off, protesting, to a 'family' in Paris a fortnight before. She was to come home in August, when Young George would also come home for his summer holidays; otherwise she had declared she would not consent to go at all. Beatrix was in London with Lady Handsworth, enjoying her second season, but not with quite the same youthful abandon as she had enjoyed her first. Miss Waterhouse was away visiting, but would come back shortly, either to Abington or to the house in Cadogan Place, wherever the headquarters of the family should be. Caroline after a week in London had pressed for Abington, and had had her own way. It was true that her way would bring most pleasure to her father. His centre of gravity had changed from London to the country. Except on occasions, his work occupied him not more than three days a week, and with her at Abington his home was indisputably there, as it would not have been otherwise. But he was getting to be a little anxious about this increasing disinclination of hers to follow out the life that seemed natural for a girl of her birth and upbringing. Both his sisters-in-law had spoken to him about it, Lady Grafton as well as Lady Handsworth. She was not doing herself justice. They knew that he did not want to give her up, and there was no necessity for her to marry just yet. But she ought not to cut herself off from the surroundings in which girls of her sort did find husbands, the surroundings in which he himself, and all of them, had found wives and husbands.

He had felt the force of this. Though he hoped to keep Caroline with him for a time longer, the thought of her eventual marriage was never quite absent from his thoughts about her. He did not want it to be, necessarily, what is called a brilliant marriage, though with a girl of Caroline's beauty and charm the most brilliant of marriages would not be more than her due; but he did want her to marry among the people with whom both sides of her family had been connected now for some generations past, and that was conditional, as it seemed to him, upon her keeping 'in the swim.' There was an idea at the back of his mind that her whole-hearted love of a country life was rather unsettling her for the right sort of marriage. It seemed actually to have been responsible for her unwillingness to accept the young man whom for some time past he had thought, not without satisfaction, that she might marry. Francis Parry was still in love with her, and a year ago she had refused him in such a way as not to have made him relinquish all hope of winning her. The young man had told Grafton so rather pathetically not so long before. He had not bothered her, he had said, but wasn't she getting tired of shutting herself away from everybody? Was his chance absolutely gone?

The question had made Grafton bethink himself. When Caroline had definitely refused Francis for the second time a year before he had been well content to have it so. She had said that she had always liked him, and given her father to understand that when she should be ready to marry he would be such a husband as she would choose. It was because she was so happy at home that she did not want to marry yet. But now he was not so sure that it would be a man of the type of Francis Parry whom she would choose. She seemed to have moved away from the sort of life he represented, which was exactly the sort of life that he himself had represented, and to which his daughters had been brought up. The fact that he had refrained hitherto with her from any reference to the young man's plea, although they had talked him over together frankly enough before, showed the extent of his doubts about her. Although he sympathised with her strong preference for this quiet stay-at-home country life, and to a large extent shared it, it seemed almost as if she were moving away from him.

They came to the high beechwood from which the famous view was to be seen. They sat on their horses, and drank in the tonic air which came from the sea across miles of open country. The sun was now high in the sky, and a line of silver in the far distance fulfilled their expectations. For in most conditions of atmosphere the view of the sea was by faith and not by sight.

"Isn't it heavenly!" said Caroline. "Oh, Dad, you must leave me to this; I want to live all my life with it. I shouldn't mind if I never saw London again."

They were going to breakfast at Grays, the seat of the Pemberton family. Bertie Pemberton, the only son, had married a few months before Mollie Walter, who had lived with her mother in a cottage at Abington. He also had forsaken London, to settle down to a country existence for the rest of his life. It had been necessary for him 'to do something' before succeeding to the parental acres, and the something he had chosen to do, after enjoying himself for three years at Oxford, was dealing with stocks and shares. This pursuit would appear to be singularly fitted for a young man with connections but no exaggerated equipment of brain power. But he was a countryman at heart, as had been all his forebears. A few years 'in the City' were his tribute to the larger life. Upon marriage he was quite content to close that chapter. There was enough for him to do with the management of his father's estate as a serious occupation, and with the sports of the field as one hardly less serious.

An old stone-roofed farmhouse, restored and refitted to make it a suitable home for an heir-apparent, was now Mollie's habitation. It stood a little way back from the road, and as Grafton and Caroline rode up she came flying down the flagged path from the house door to greet them. She was like a vision of the summer morning in her sparkling bridal happiness. Caroline embraced her warmly when she had dismounted, with more emotion than she could have expressed. The happiness of others is a moving thing, especially when it rests upon love; and Mollie was supremely happy. Her husband, with a loud-voiced geniality which showed him at least to have nothing to complain of in life, followed her out and added his welcome. Thereafter there was talk and laughter, pride of new possession and sympathy with it, until it was time for the Graftons to ride home again.

"Isn't it lovely to see them so pleased with themselves?" Caroline said, when she had waved her last farewell. "Do you remember Mollie a year ago, how shy and retiring she was? She is like a different creature now."

"Master Bertie is a different creature too," said her father. "He's always been noisy, but I like the sort of noise he makes now better than I did."

"He adores Mollie," said Caroline, "and she is just the wife for him. I love to see them together. You see, Dad, it isn't necessary to fag about in London as a preparation for marriage. Mollie has hardly ever been there."

She seemed to have divined his inmost thoughts, and her speech surprised him a little. "Have you been thinking about that?" he asked.

"No," she said. "I'm quite happy with you, darling, if only you will leave me peacefully to look after you at Abington."

Her words gave him pleasure, but his conscience was aroused about her. "Lord knows I am happy enough to have you," he said. "But I can't keep you for ever. You'll want what Mollie has some day."

"Some day," she said. "Yes. But I have all I want for the present."

"What about Francis?" he asked, after a short pause. "He wants you as much as ever. He told me so."

She looked troubled. "I know he does," she said. "He told me so too."

He waited for her to go on.

"I like him as much as ever," she said, "for what he is."

"For what he is!" he echoed.

"What he is isn't what I want now," she said, not without hesitation. "It would be different if I were in love with him, as I suppose he is with me,—poor Francis! If I felt like that I should not mind what I did or where I went with him."

"My dear child, you talk as if he'd take you out to the wilds. You'd live where you liked, within reach of London. He has to stick to it closer than I do, at present. You couldn't live right away, like this. But—"

"Oh, it wouldn't be the same," she said. "But it isn't that, Dad. I don't love him. I thought I might, perhaps, last year, enough to live whatever life he liked with him. But now I know I never can. He isn't what I want."

"What do you want?" he asked, throwing a glance at her.

"Only you, darling," she said lightly. "Don't worry me about Francis. I'm worried about him a little myself, because I do like him, and we're friends. But he'll get over it, and find somebody else. I'm heart-free, Dad. Really I am. I love you and B, and Barbara and Bunting, and the Dragon, and every single soul who lives at Abington, except Lord Salisbury; and he's going soon. When I begin to love somebody else I'll let you know. I don't suppose you'll have me on your hands all your life, but you'll have me for a good long time to come. Let's have a canter."

He was pleased enough. If she had wanted to marry Francis Parry he would have resigned her, and felt that it was the right thing. But he didn't want that, or any other marriage for her, yet. He only wanted to be sure that he was not keeping her selfishly; and her words, and more than her words, her tone, relieved him of any doubt on that subject. And her love for Abington, and her wish to make his home for him there suited him. She was more his at Abington than she could be in London.

But he made up his mind that the succession of guests should not fail at Abington. She must not live out of the world, as he and his like estimated the world, at her age. He did not want her to become like the three loud good-natured horsey Pemberton girls, who in spite of their parentage and their wide relationships would always be country cousins, wherever they went. Country cousins who came from such a house as Grays were well enough in their way, but it was not the way of the world that Caroline belonged to, the world that she was so fitted to adorn, and they were not.

They had cantered across a high-lying common, and descended into a country lane along which they walked their horses, ready for conversation again. The hedges on either side of them were pink and white with May; the golden carpet of early June was spread all over the meadows; the trees wore their dress of freshest green; larks sang in high ecstasy overhead. Grafton felt the delight of the unused untroubled country, but though it was a rest and a refreshment to him, his life was bound up with other things that took him away from it, even while he was enjoying it. Stealing a glance at his girl's much-loved face, he caught something of what it was to her to soak herself in all the happiness of nature, to wake and sleep with it, and to cast off from her the fitful life of sought-out amusements. She had flowered under it. Much as he adored his little Beatrix, and sweet and kind as she was, it came to him that Caroline's was the finer character of the two. Beatrix loved Abington too, and the quieter life they led there; but she loved it as he did, as a change and a refreshment. She would never have been content to settle down to it as Caroline had, for she had not the same resources in herself.

"Do you think there's anything between Beatrix and Dick Mansergh?" he asked suddenly.

She laughed at him. "I've been wondering when you were going to ask me that," she said.

"Oh, then you've noticed it."

"Darling old thing!" she said fondly. "It's plain enough that he's head over ears. You must have seen, haven't you?"

"Well, I suppose I have. But I want to know about her. She isn't head over ears, is she?"

"No, she certainly isn't that. It's too soon, you know, Daddy."

A shadow always came over his face when that affair with Lassigny was brought to his mind. "She's not still thinking of that fellow, is she?" he asked.

"I expect she thinks of him a good deal. That's why she won't think of anybody else for some time to come."

He did not push his question. He knew that that danger was past, and that if Beatrix still thought of Lassigny it was not with love. That had died in her.

"Poor darling!" he said tenderly. "You know how I hated it at the time. But when she was getting over it I sometimes almost wished that he had come back. I'm precious glad he didn't, though."

"So am I now," said Caroline. "But it did leave a mark upon her. Should you mind, Dad, if she did want to marry Dick?"

"Mind? No. Why should I mind?" he asked. "It's just the sort of marriage I should like for her. I suppose they'd be away a lot at first, but the old man is over eighty. It can't be very long before Dick succeeds. Then they'd be living at Wilborough. There's nothing I should like better."

She was a little surprised at this. It had not been only his objection to the man whom Beatrix had wanted to marry that had so upset him nearly a year before.

He answered the thought in her mind. "I know B has got to marry," he said. "She's cut out for it. She was so young last year, and it came as a shock to me that she was already of a marriageable age. I couldn't get used to it—that she wasn't mine any more."

"Do you feel like that about it, Dad?"

"I don't now. I've got used to the idea."

"Of course we shall always be yours, whoever we marry."

"Not as you have been, darling. That's impossible. It was old Lady Mansergh who told me that fathers hated their daughters marrying because they had always been first with them, and couldn't be first any longer. That's true, I suppose, if they marry somebody you can't take in. It would certainly have been true of me if Beatrix had married that fellow." He never spoke of Lassigny by name. "But with a man you like and respect it's different. You don't lose everything, even if you can't be first any longer. If he's the right sort of man you gain. I believe your grandfather felt that about me. He loved your mother, and she was very young when we married. He didn't like giving her up, but he was so nice about it that I took particular pains to show him what a lot I thought of him. He was a fine old boy. I wish you'd known him longer, Cara. I believe, when he got used to it, that he was as fond of me as he was of any of his sons. Your mother used to write to him every week, and I used to write to him too. He told me before he died that it had made all the difference to him, the first year of our marriage. She was his only daughter, you see, and that was the time he felt it most."

"Should you have felt like that about Francis, if I had wanted to marry him, Dad?"

"It would rather have depended on how he felt about me," he said.

"Should you about Dick Mansergh?"

"I think I should. Yes, I think I should. I like him. He's straight. And he's companionable too. Besides, he'd be giving her all she ought to have. That would count for a good deal."

"In what way, Dad?"

"Well, you see, you're responsible for bringing up your daughters in a certain way. You take a pride in what they become. You don't want it all thrown away on somebody who isn't up to their level."

She laughed. "It all sounds very mercenary," she said.

"I don't think it is. A woman's position is her husband's; until she's married it's her father's. You don't want your daughters lessened. It isn't a question of money. It's like to like. Look at that chap your Aunt Prudence married."

"He had lots of money."

"It's all he did have. A silly fellow! Nobody thinks anything of him beside her. She has to carry him on her back wherever she goes."

"Poor Aunt Prudence! It's rather pathetic the way she wants people to like him."

"Women have a wonderful sort of loyalty in that way. She must have found out his deficiencies long ago, but I suppose she wouldn't admit to herself that he has any. It's the people who look on who see it. All of us thought the world of her. She'd have helped on the biggest sort of man. It's all wasted on that rabbit-brained nobody."

"Well, darling, none of us are going to trouble you in that way. I shan't, because I shall certainly want somebody with brains, though I haven't got as many as Aunt Prudence. And I don't think Beatrix will make any marriage that you wouldn't like, now. She's had her lesson, poor darling! She won't let herself be caught again."

"I really should like her to marry Mansergh, if she cared for him."

"She doesn't yet, dear. But I think she's quite likely to come to it. I rather think that he's strong enough to make her."