Caroline and Maurice went to the South of France for their honeymoon, and were away a month. On their return they spent a couple of days in Paris, where Barbara was again installed for her last three months with her 'family.'

Barbara had taken very kindly to Maurice. She had cleared the ground by telling him everything she could think of that she had ever said about him from the first. "Now if you can like me after that," she said, "well and good. We shall be friends for life. If not, say so at once, and I shall know what to do."

Maurice had replied that he should have no difficulty in liking her if she would permit him, and she had forthwith taken him under her wing and given him several valuable hints on points of behaviour, from which he professed himself greatly to have profited. He had given her some in return, and they were on the best of terms together.

She was allowed to spend the days with them while they were in Paris. Caroline soon discovered that she was not happy, and was longing to be at home again. She clung to her side rather pathetically, and was quieter than her wont, though her quietness was varied by bursts of gaiety. Caroline made an opportunity of being alone with her soon after their arrival, and then it all came out. She sat by her side on a sofa with her head on her shoulder.

"It's lovely to see you so happy, darling," she said, more tenderly than she was wont to speak. "I think Maurice is a real dear, and you've improved him enormously already."

Caroline laughed. Barbara was allowed to say these things. "He's improved me," she said.

"No, he couldn't do that, darling," said Barbara caressingly. "You're perfect as it is. How I do wish I was coming home with you. I did ask Daddy, and he wouldn't let me. I hate being kept here, and I've learnt all the French I want to learn. I'm perfectly miserable here."

"Why, darling?" asked Caroline. "You were happy enough here before, and it won't be long now before you're at home for good."

"I don't think I shall be much wanted when I do come home," she said forlornly.

Caroline protested warmly against this statement. "You're the only one of us left at home now to look after Daddy," she ended. "Of course I shall see him a lot, but I can't be as much with him as you can."

Barbara began to cry. She was not given to tears, and hated to have them commented upon when she did give way. She cried softly on Caroline's shoulder. "I thought Dad would want me when you and B had gone," she said. "I wanted to begin at once, to be a lot to him. Of course he loves me, but he doesn't want me as he did you and B."

Caroline saw that there was something behind this. "Tell me about it, darling," she said softly.

"I believe he'll marry Ella," she blurted out. "She began to worm herself in the moment you had left. And it's going on now. That's what makes me so unhappy, being away."

Caroline was too surprised for the moment to say anything. An uneasy feeling came over her that she had been too immersed in her own happiness to have cared much what was happening to those others whom she loved.

Barbara went on. "He writes to me regularly," she said, "as he has always done. But his letters are full of her. She always seem to be there, whenever he comes down; or he goes over to Surley. He stayed there from Friday till Tuesday last week, instead of going home. He says that she has done a lot to make up to him for not having us. That's how she does it, I suppose. I never liked her as much as the rest of you did, and now she's showing what she is."

Caroline put this aside for the time. Her mind was working. "I asked her to look after Daddy when I went away," she said. "She has written to me about him, and I've been glad. I never thought what you think, darling. She has been almost like one of us. I don't think she can possibly think of him in that way, or he of her. There has been nothing in the letters of either of them to show it."

"Well, he doesn't want me, anyhow," said Barbara. "Perhaps I'm jealous, but if there were nothing else I don't see why she should put herself in my place."

"Poor old pet!" said Caroline, kissing her. "Daddy couldn't get you back again directly after you had come over here, to finish up. When you do get home you'll be just as much to him as B and I have been. You know he loves you just as much, but we are older and—"

"Oh, I'm not grumbling about that. He has always been perfectly sweet to me, and he hasn't realised that I'm no longer a child, any more than you did up to a little time ago. But I was so looking forward to taking your and B's place with him—I know I couldn't do it as well, but I should have tried—and now she comes in to spoil it all. I hate her."

"Why do you hate her, darling? Why have you never liked her as we have?"

"I don't know. It's just that I haven't. Perhaps a little because she has tried to make me. I didn't exactly hold out, but somehow I couldn't. I suppose I knew all the time that this was in her."

"Well, Barbara, darling, I don't think it's as you say; but supposing it were! We ought not to set ourselves against it, ought we?"

"What, our own Daddy! I think it would be horrible."

"Why, darling?"

She did not say why, but repeated that it would be horrible.

Caroline was at a loss. "I don't know why you don't like Ella," she said slowly. "You are good at judging of people, I know—better than I am—but I think that I should have found it out by this time if there had been anything that one ought not to like in her. I can't see it if there is. I think I love her next best after the family. I do love her."

"Would you love her if you thought she wanted to marry Dad?"

"Yes, I think perhaps I should love her all the more, though just at first perhaps I shouldn't like it—I mean I shouldn't like anybody to marry him. It's difficult to say, before anything has happened; and I believe you are making a mistake too. But supposing she did, it could only be because she really loved him. She has had plenty of offers of marriage."

"So she says."

"Oh, Barbara, darling! That's silly. She is beautiful, and clever, and nice too. Even if you don't agree entirely with the rest of us in liking her, we all do like her. And I don't think even you have not liked her really, though you think now you haven't."

"Well, go on."

"How am I to go on? Don't you agree that she wouldn't marry him unless she loved him?"

"Oh, I suppose so; but it would be a silly sort of love, when he's so much older than she is."

"Isn't that rather reflecting on him? Women do marry men a lot older than themselves, and love them devotedly. I'm sure darling Dad is worth any woman's love. He's so kind, and understanding. And he's very good-looking too, and not even elderly, as many men of his age are."

"I can't imagine him falling in love, especially with somebody like her, who has been almost like we have to him."

"Well, that's what makes it difficult to talk about. Perhaps he wouldn't. I can't take it for granted you are right. One can only look at it in a general sort of way; and if it did happen I don't think there would be—anything out of the way in it—certainly nothing horrible, as you say."

Barbara's tears flowed again. "I suppose it's I who am rather horrid," she said. "I should be if there wasn't anything in it at all. But I'm almost certain there is, or I shouldn't have thought about it. Did you know that the moment you went away she went out for a walk with him?"

"Yes, she told me that, and that he was feeling frightfully depressed at losing me, and she hoped she had cheered him up. If that's all, Barbara, darling, I think you are making a great deal out of a very little. I asked her to look after him, myself. Of course I didn't mean any more than to be as she always has been."

"I think you might have asked me to do that. I wanted to."

Caroline was stricken with compunction. "Oh, darling," she said, "I knew you would. I'd no idea of her taking your place. I know how glad he will be to have you back. And I'm going home now. I shall look after him myself."

"Will you write and tell me what is happening?"

"Of course I will. Everything."

"If that is happening, shall you try to stop it?"

"What could I do to stop it?" she asked, after a pause.

"You might remind Daddy that all his daughters haven't gone away from him yet. And Caroline, I wish you'd just say something—from yourself, I mean—about me being older, and that you liked having me to talk to and tell things to, after B was married. You did, you know, in the summer holidays. Daddy might see it if you said it about me—that I could be a lot to him, I mean, if he wanted me. Of course you'd have to do it carefully."

Caroline promised to do this, and left Barbara two days later, somewhat comforted, but still rebellious at her exile, at this particular time.

She had given Caroline a good deal to think about. She confided Barbara's fears to Maurice, who expressed himself incredulous. But on such a subject as this he was not much of a guide. His training had not prepared him for judging of a man considerably older than himself, as one who had lived more in the world might have done. Grafton was Caroline's father. He could treat him with respect, and with affection, but hardly as having any of the qualities of youth remaining in him. He thought it very delightful that his family should treat him in the companionable way they did, which was different from any way of parents and children of which he had had experience; but he was still apt to be surprised at certain manifestations of their attitude towards him. Caroline felt all the time that it was even more difficult for him than it was for her to envisage her father as a man who might still desire for himself what belonged by right to youth. It was only difficult for her because he was her father. She had to think of him from outside herself, and she had plenty of experience to guide her in seeing him as a man who might legitimately look for a further period of happiness in marriage, and as quite capable of gaining the love and devotion of a woman much younger than himself, and of keeping it.

"I do want him to be happy," she said, "and in his own way. Of course it would mean that he would give to her a great deal of what we have all had, and that's why poor little Barbara hates it so. But after all it is just what has happened with us—with B and me, and will happen by and bye with Barbara. He isn't less to us than he was, but he's no longer everything. We shouldn't be less to him."

"I think you would," said Maurice. "It isn't quite the same."

The idea still shocked him a little, and for the first time he was unwilling to express all his thoughts to Caroline, for they would seem to reflect upon her father. His simplicity and singleness of purpose went along with some rigidity of mind and outlook. Life presented itself to him in elementary forms, and his ideas, born partly from his very limited experience, had not yet fully expanded under the influence of the great change that had come to himself. It was a man's right course to find his work in the world and to give himself up to it. All the rest would be added in due season, and he must not step out of his path to seek it for himself. He had lately learned that work can have a consecration that will lift it to a still higher plane of rightness; but that discovery had only settled his convictions. He did not think of Grafton as a man who had ever put his work in its proper place. He had seen him only enjoying the fruits of it, and depending upon those fruits for most of his contentment in life. He might not acknowledge it, even to himself, of Caroline's father, and certainly he would not have acknowledged it to her, but his tendency was to regard a man to whom life came so easily as it did to Grafton as liable to be weakened in fibre. He might take to himself gratifications that did not legitimately belong to him. In some respects the conventions of youth are more binding than those of age. Maurice would not have been disturbed at the idea of his father-in-law married again, to a lady of ripe age. He could not accustom himself to the idea of his falling in love at the age of fifty-one, and hoped that Barbara's fears would prove to be unfounded.

They went home by way of Havre and Southampton, and reached Abington without going to London. The Abbey was empty. Miss Waterhouse was away visiting, and Grafton was tied to the Bank that week. He was to stay at Stone Cottage over the week-end and Caroline made the most loving preparations for his reception.

Her happiness, but for the cloud brought by Barbara's fears, which try as she would she could not treat otherwise than as a cloud, was complete. The cottage, which had been renovated for them throughout, was as charming a little house as any newly married couple could wish to inhabit. Her father had offered to enlarge it for her, but she had wanted to run it on a modest scale, with only one servant, and as the wife of a poor man to do a great deal in it herself. Electric light had been installed, and a sumptuously fitted bathroom. Otherwise, except for its new paint and papers, it was as Mollie Pemberton and her mother had made themselves happy in.

Caroline had had her way with all the furnishing and arrangements of the Abbey when they had come to live there, but her zest for her very own little house was in no way diminished. It was almost too full of wedding presents, many of which would have been more suitable for the wife of a rich man than of a poor one. But Caroline had a genius for making a room. Mollie Pemberton opened her eyes when she saw what she had done with Stone Cottage.

Mollie and her husband, the Prescotts, Worthing, and Ella Carruthers, all came to see her on the day of her arrival, or the day after, and all helped her to get into order. She thought she must know from Ella's manner if what Barbara dreaded had come to pass, or was coming to pass. But she could tell nothing. Ella was just the same to her as ever, and showed herself delighted and excited at having her back. She seemed to have nothing to hide, and talked about Grafton with the frank affection that she had always exhibited towards him. If Caroline had not seen Barbara, no idea of any change would have come to her.

And yet she was not sure that Barbara was not right.

On the third morning she went to the Abbey to fetch some things for her father, who was coming down that evening.

It was rather sad to see it deserted, by all except the servants. But she did not feel sad on her own account. She now stood outside it, and the life it represented. She went through the large and beautiful rooms, so different from those in which her own life was to be spent, and asked herself whether she would regret anything that she had given up to marry Maurice. She could not find in herself the least desire to inhabit such a house again, even with him. She had immensely enjoyed coming to it, and dealing with it, but those enjoyments seemed now to have belonged to a different person. She had taken naturally the good things that had come to her through wealth, and found pleasure in them; but she wanted them no longer. She had something much better. Her happiness, as she went through the house, and into the gardens, was singing in her. The house and the gardens themselves had given her happiness, but it was nothing to this new-found happiness, and they spoke to her scarcely at all now for herself. She was thinking all the time of her own little house in the village.

Not quite all the time. Her thoughts were much occupied with her father. The empty house, which for some time he would have to inhabit alone, or with the companionship of guests instead of that of his children who had surrounded him with love and affection, brought home to her fully for the first time what he had lost. If the light of the house had gone out for her, it had gone out for him also. But she had her home and her centre of love elsewhere.

She thought of the mother whom she had known and loved as a child, and still loved, as she knew he did. If she had been alive he would not thus have come to the end of most of what had made his home dear to him. She wondered what it would have felt like to come home from her honeymoon and find her mother waiting for her. Her old home would not have lost so much of its meaning if she had been there. But she did not think much about herself except to ask what she could do to make up to her father for his loss.

She thought, rather sadly on his behalf, that the very perfection of their family life must make the change worse for him. She would be much with him when he came down to Abington, but not the constant companion she had been hitherto. He had done hardly anything there without her, and she had devoted herself to him as now she would devote herself to her husband. She had gained immeasurably, and a great part of her gain was his loss. She knew that she had been more to him than any of the others, and that he had come more and more to depend upon her. She had loved him to come to her with any new idea or discovery, which would have lost half its value to him unless they had shared it. His letters since her marriage had been full of little jokes and felicities to which he had wanted her response; and she had always given it, but with the knowledge that it was no longer to him that she would take her own little discoveries and appreciations, and that he might sooner or later, unless she was very careful, be saddened by the change in her. He would never claim more than his right, but the change would be there, of necessity, and the loss to him.

Ought she not to be glad if he had found some one in whom his affections and home-loving desires could centre themselves again—some one who would give him back the devotion that he so richly deserved. It was natural that poor little Barbara should think that her turn had come to be his chosen companion, and resent the intrusion of another into the place she was so touchingly anxious to fill. But Barbara could not be expected to realise that her part would probably only be played for a few years at the most, and that when she left home the change would fall upon him still more heavily. And by that time his chance of winning for himself what he might want would be less. Perhaps it would have disappeared altogether. Caroline thought that her father would not deliberately set himself to choose a wife with whom he might be happy. But if a woman so beautiful and so suited to him in mind as Ella were to show him now that she loved him well enough to marry him—surely his children who loved him should do nothing to dim the happiness that might be his!

And yet she was not quite happy about it.