When Grafton left Maurice's room he went to the Long Gallery, where Caroline was sitting with Miss Waterhouse. When Caroline went away he stayed there. Miss Waterhouse had not yet expressed herself to him.

"Well, Dragon, what do you think of it all?" he asked her.

"I think you have been very wise, and very kind," she said.

"It had to be—eh?"

"Yes, I think it had to be, under the circumstances."

"What do you mean by the circumstances?"

"When two young people are brought together in the way they have been, I think love is likely to come of it."

Her answer made him vaguely uneasy. "That's what the world will say," he said. "If it were only that, it wouldn't be very satisfactory, would it? Don't you see a deeper suitability in it than there is on the surface? It's what I have to look for, to make it bearable."

"I think there is what you call a deeper suitability. I think Caroline will be happy in her marriage, when the time comes for it."

"You're not very enthusiastic, Dragon. Is she satisfied with your view of it?"

"I was the only person who knew anything until you came home. I sympathised with her. I saw how deep her love was. But I couldn't be enthusiastic until I knew how you would take it. I couldn't have said that you would have been wrong in asking at least for a term of probation, as you did in Beatrix's case."

"But I didn't ask for it—because I trusted Caroline to have faced all the objections she would know I should feel, and just exactly not to have allowed herself to fall in love owing to what you call the circumstances. She would know what she wanted, I said to myself. And she wouldn't change, whatever I did or said. It wouldn't have come to an end of itself, as Beatrix's affair did. I hope you're not going to say that my reasoning was wrong. It hasn't been very easy to sink all my own ideas—of fitness—of what one would expect in marriage for a girl like Caroline."

"I think you've been entirely right; more right than if you'd stood out, or even questioned it. It would have made no difference, and you'd have had to give way in the end. Nothing you could have done or said would have so added to dear Caroline's happiness as what you have said and done. She was dreading more than anything a separation in spirit from you. I know that, though she said little about it. Now that fear is removed she is blissfully happy. Nothing that anybody else says will matter to her at all."

"And yet you don't seem to think I reached my conclusions in the right way."

"What I think is that she couldn't have reasoned it out in the way you thought she had. A woman doesn't reason like that—or at least she doesn't. It was just her heart that guided her."

"But she did reason. She told me that if he hadn't been what she has found out for herself that he is, and she'd been inclined to fall in love with him—just in the way you say she has, with gratitude, and pity, working in her—I suppose that's what you mean—she'd have resisted it."

"I think she couldn't have fallen in love with him, unless he'd shown himself to her as he has. There wouldn't be anything, for her, to fall in love with. It was her heart prompted her all the time. But of course she has tried hard to see it all in the light that you have taught her to follow. She would want to satisfy you that she hadn't given her love lightly. She wouldn't have wanted to satisfy herself. She would have known that she was right."

"Do you think she's right, Dragon?"

"Yes, I do."

"And you're not disappointed that this has come about?"

"Not for her sake. I am for yours. You would have expected her to shine in the world you belong to, and that she has belonged to. You must suffer somewhat in your just pride in her. But it's a far bigger thing to be able to sink that, and to want only her happiness, and to trust her to know where it lies. You'll certainly have your reward, though it may take some time to get over the disappointment. She'll love and trust you, as she couldn't have done if you had stood out ever so little."

"Well, you're very comforting, Dragon. Stimulating too. I told Worthing something of what I'd gone through about it, last night, and said that I shouldn't say as much to anybody else. But you're different. I shall have to stick up to Katharine Handsworth and Mary Grafton, and all the rest of them, when my own feeling will be much the same as theirs. I want something to support me."

"Yes. But I think it will all die down sooner than you think. All women are at heart sympathetic with a love match, you know. And they love Caroline. They won't want to make her feel that she is lowering herself."

"What about B?"

"Caroline has written to her, and to Barbara and Bunting. Whatever B has to say will be said to you, not to Caroline."

"B has been more critical of Maurice than anybody, you know."

"She will want that forgotten."

He was silent for a time, and then asked: "What are Caroline's ideas about getting married? She hasn't said anything to me about that yet."

"She has said very little to me. Having her engagement just on the right footing has been enough for her."

"Has she said anything at all?"

"She would expect to wait, I think, until he got some sort of place; then she would not mind in how small a way they began."

"Well, there's no reason why they should begin in such a very small way. If I accept Maurice as the right husband for her, I should naturally do for her what I did for B."

He had settled ten thousand pounds on Beatrix. Miss Waterhouse knew this. So did Caroline.

"They could marry at any time on that," she said. "And he will be earning something in a few months. Do you want them to marry soon?"

"Well now, I'll make a clean breast of it to you, my dear Dragon. As long as they are not married, I shan't be able to prevent myself having a sort of hope that they won't be, after all."

She smiled. "You will have more pleasure of her now," she said, "when she is settled in her new life."

"That's what I've told myself. She will be very careful, I know, to let it make as little difference between her and me as possible. But it can't be quite the same as it has been. She has given her love to him, and I must be second where I've been first. But when she's once married he'll have his place and I shall have mine. We shan't clash in any way. I'm happier about B now than I was for the month or two before she was married."

It was the first time he had alluded to Beatrix's attitude towards him at that time.

"I think B was selfish," she said at once. "Caroline won't be like that. Her love is as deep as B's—deeper, for she has a deeper nature—but it will not carry her away in the same way. She will never hurt others who love her."

"I should like to see her happily married, you know. She'll be more than she's ever been. It will complete her. She's one of the right people, Dragon. The deeper you go down, the more you find."

"Yes, she's like that, the dear child. And she has gained greatly in character since we came to live here."

"You've seen that, have you?"

"Oh, yes. It's the good simplicity in her."

"That's what she says she sees in him; it's where they come together. Well, he'll have his regular job here, next year. It won't be much, but with what I shall give her they could begin. They could have Stone Cottage. Do you think Caroline has thought of that at all?"

"She hasn't said anything about it. But it would be just the right beginning for them; and it would be delightful for us to have her so near."

"We should have to think of it as having them so near, shouldn't we? It would mean a lot to me, and to you too, and the children, to have her here; but—. Well, I've said nothing about it to her or to him yet. They may have some idea that they ought to wait till he can do it all, or most of it, for her. I don't want to claim more than is my right in her, Dragon. I've had a bit of a lesson about that with B, you know."

"I think he would have no right to object to her doing more to support their home than he can at first. It is just where the difference, that you can't get over, comes in. Caroline ought not to be kept waiting because he is not the sort of young man she would have been expected to marry. What you would give her would help in any case, as it helps with Beatrix. It is only that in this case it would help much more. It would be just one of the many things she would bring him that he is very fortunate to get with her. It would be a test of the large simplicity she sees in him if he took it gratefully, and without question."

He laughed at her. "Why, Dragon," he said. "I believe, after all, you take Worthing's view of it—that it's infernal impudence of him to expect to get Caroline at all."

She smiled in return. "I have every hope that he will prove worthy of her," was all the answer she made to this charge.

Grafton made his offer to Caroline, and gained all he could have wanted in return from her glowing grateful expression of happiness. "Darling old Daddy, you are good to us," she said. "I do want to begin soon, but I didn't know whether it would be possible. Stone Cottage will be just perfect for us; we shall be near you, which will be lovely. I must go and tell Maurice at once."

Maurice thanked Grafton for this extra gift in a way that pleased him. "You've given me Caroline," he said, "and now you've given us both this. I have more to thank you for, Mr. Grafton, than I can ever say."

His gratitude showed itself continually in his attitude towards the older man. Grafton knew that affection and admiration were working in his mind towards him, and he had only to stretch out his hand and take it, if he wanted it. The workings of his own mind were contradictory. Outwardly, and with strong restraint over himself, he had done the utmost that could have been expected of him. He had sunk all his grudges, and hidden all his disappointment. But he knew that still more had to be done if he were to gain the contentment in Caroline's marriage that for her sake he was simulating. It could only be done by receiving Maurice as a son, and if he could not do that for Maurice's own sake as well as for Caroline's, she would find it out sooner or later, and her happiness would be dimmed. And her love for himself would have received a hurt.

He set himself to talk to Maurice, to find out what was in him, to make contact. He found all the boy's simple philosophy of life good and straight and true, and under the impulse of his great happiness and gratitude he found expression for it. His whole being was set towards Caroline. His ambitions were all towards fitting himself to be her worthy companion in life, and to bringing her the fruit of his gifts. These could never be to any considerable extent those to be exchanged for money, and his thoughts did not run on the lines of a successful career. He would be worth a good position in the limited field to which he would devote his energies, and he took it for granted that it would come to him by and bye. For himself he looked upon it only as giving him further scope for the work for which he was fitting himself. There was never any hint of increased opportunities for his own pleasure in the future. He would have the full fruition of his own desires from the first, and he would owe it to Caroline and in a secondary degree to Grafton. It was she whom he would work and live for. There was a more single-minded devotion in his attitude towards her than in Dick's towards Beatrix. All Dick's life and work would be sweetened by Beatrix's love, but they would be pursued, as the life and work of most men are pursued, for their own ends. Caroline would be the end and aim of Maurice's whole existence.

Grafton was soothed in his spirit by this whole-hearted homage paid to his girl. She was worth every bit of it, but a lover does not always honour his mistress for what she is; it is often enough for him if she is what he wants her to be. Grafton would have been up in arms at once if Maurice had shown himself merely overjoyed at winning Caroline, and holding himself as if he had only gained his deserts. He was not prepared to look upon her as fulfilling her destiny in decorating and solacing Maurice's unimportant life, however she might think of herself and her duties towards him. But if Maurice looked upon himself as owing her life-long devotion and service, his relationship towards her brought no sense of assumption to her father. It was the right relationship in his view, and he could rest himself upon it, as the conviction strengthened itself that it was based upon something stable and sure in Maurice's character.

Taking pains to find qualities in him that he had not troubled to look for before, he was inclined to wonder that he had thought him dull and uninteresting in conversation. When he had something real to talk about he could talk as well as another, if he were encouraged to do so. The difference that had always hampered him with Grafton, as a much older man, most of whose experiences and interests were beyond his reach, was being solved by the affection that was reaching out for expression. The most learned of men find pleasure in the conversation of those who are not learned, if it is natural, and especially if there is affection to influence it. And Grafton was not learned; his brains were no better than Maurice's, though expression of them came easier to him.

He knew, by the end of those two days, before he went back to his work in London, that he had only to open his heart to Maurice, and he would gain from him all that a man who loved his daughter could want from her husband. He had Dick's affection and friendship. Maurice's was just as well worth having, and it would be given him in still greater measure.

As he travelled up to London he smiled to himself as he remembered the way the Prescotts had received the news. They were the only people, except Miss Waterhouse and Worthing, who knew of it yet.

They had guessed it, Viola had said in triumph. She had told Gerry it was bound to happen, and he had said he had seen it before she had, upon which had followed a fearsome quarrel. The one thing Gerry would not stand was anybody being cleverer than himself, and unless she was prepared to acknowledge herself a sort of bat-eyed idiot their married life would be wrecked sooner or later.

Neither of them had seen anything at all unsuitable in an engagement between Maurice and Caroline. In fact they had seemed to expect Grafton to be at least as pleased about it as they were themselves. He had not led them to suppose that he was not pleased, but had given them opportunities of showing the opinion they held about Maurice.

They had laid stress on his complete unselfishness. "He'll go out of his way to help anybody," Prescott had said. "And he does it because it's his nature to, not because he thinks he ought to. He thinks about himself less than anybody I've ever known. Caroline will have a splendid husband."

There was the unworldly view. The question of station in life did not interest the Prescotts. Grafton knew that it would interest the people he would see in London considerably.