Preparations for her father's visit were a serious affair with Caroline, and with Maurice too, for he saw how much it meant to her, and loved every manifestation of her personality.

At the same time he was a little nervous about it all. There seemed to him such an immense difference between the way of living which was natural to himself, and that which Caroline took for granted, even in this modest home of theirs. All the beautiful furnishing and appointments, as perfect on their smaller scale as those to be found at the Abbey, he took pleasure in as the right setting for Caroline, and as giving her pleasure; but they said nothing to him apart from her, and he found them even a little irksome. They marked the difference between him and her, and, especially in the light of her careful and loving preparations, between him and her father.

Grafton was not a man to whom creature comforts were all in all. He could have roughed it if necessary, even at his age, as well as Maurice himself. But it seemed to Maurice that he needed as much attention and cosseting as a woman. His bedroom was arranged so that he should miss nothing of what he was accustomed to—his personal belongings brought down from the Abbey, his bedside table furnished with carefully shaded light, books, cigarettes, matches, ash-tray. His own servant was to be in waiting for him when he came, to deal with his clothes, and again in the morning, when he was to have his tea at the early hour he affected. There were the soaps and salts he liked in the bathroom, and the bath sheet was to be warmed and sent up at exactly the right time. Meals were a subject of earnest discussion between Caroline and her maid, and immense care was to be taken in preparing them. He had stocked their tiny cellar himself, and old Jarvis was called in to decide upon the question of wines and liqueurs, Maurice being entirely ignorant on such subjects. And Jarvis was to wait at table. The maid, though a treasure, could not do justice to the occasion.

In as far as all this meant that Caroline was displaying the charming desire of a young housewife to acquit herself well, and to do honour to one whom she loved, he could sympathise with her. But he did not see that it meant that almost entirely, and put a good deal of it down to the exigencies of a rich man, which Caroline had rather wasted herself hitherto in satisfying.

He was in process of adjusting himself all round. He would not have believed beforehand that so many of the ways of a large house could have been imported into a small one, run with one servant, as were surrounding him in Stone Cottage. They would not always live exactly as they were going to live during the few days of Grafton's visit But the life to which they were already settling down was far more elaborate than any he had ever lived before, even in Worthing's bachelor establishment, which was run on more elaborate lines than those of his father's vicarage.

Caroline busied herself greatly about the house, doing much of the work in the rooms, and even in the kitchen, herself. But that was when he was out. Whenever he saw her she was no more occupied with such work than she had been at the Abbey. She would be in her drawing-room, having changed her clothes, ready to give him his tea when he came home, and she would keep him bright company afterwards. Then she would dress for dinner, and of course it was taken for granted that he would dress, too. The little dinner would be perfect, and the invaluable maid would serve it in such fashion that it was difficult to think of her as having also cooked it. Then after their coffee they would go into the drawing-room, where it seemed profanation for Maurice to smoke a pipe. So, though Caroline encouraged him to do so, he was preparing himself to knock it off altogether, and content himself with a cigarette after dinner until later in the evening.

To a man brought up to this way of living it would have been a miracle of happiness to have had it all so cleverly provided for him by the young wife who was anxious that he should miss nothing of what he had been used to. The little parlour, beautifully furnished as it was, was not a lady's boudoir, in which a man could not feel himself at home. There was a big easy chair, books, and magazines, arrangements for writing. But though the whole house and all its arrangements were to Caroline the last word in simplicity and economy, it was complicated luxury to him, of a sort that he could only adopt as his ordinary mode of life for her sake. It was not he who had gained it for her, or he might have taken more pride in it. As against this it was part of her, who was so much more delicately nurtured than himself, and the fit setting for her delicate charm, which he, as much as any of those who considered it ill-allied with his outward absence of charm and delicacy, thought of as setting her above him. So he was happy in adapting himself to what meant restraint and careful watchfulness to him. In all essentials her desires were as simple and unenvious as his. He knew that if their lot had been cast in a new country, where she would have had few or none of the refinements that she had always lived with, she would have made nothing of doing without them, and would have worked for him as he would have worked for her. She should never guess, if he could help it, that this sophisticated life was uncongenial to him. He had her, as his constant delight and treasure, and what did anything else matter?

Caroline went to the station alone to meet her father. Maurice had work to finish at the office, or said he had. He thought that Grafton would like to have her to himself alone at their first meeting. He was full of these little delicacies of mind, and of thoughtfulness for others. And her tenderness for her father had awakened an echo of it in himself. He had been so generous to him, giving him this priceless gift, which he had done so little to deserve, and losing so much in the giving of it. He was anxious to please him, and efface himself in doing so. There was not much he could do to show him gratitude. But she could do a great deal.

Only, if Grafton were preparing to transfer the centre of his affections from the hearts that had hitherto held it, Maurice would not look upon him with quite the same eyes.

He thought about it as he sat at his table in the office, not very busy with the work that he had given himself to do. He could not yet get used to the idea, try as he would. He thought that it was troubling Caroline, though she was preparing herself to welcome it if it should happen. It disturbed him somewhat that there was already a subject upon which they could not talk together with the freedom which it was their joy to use in everything. But to express all his thoughts would be to criticise her father, and he would not do that. In the sanguine spirit of youth, he hoped that this visit would prove that the fear was unfounded, and returned to his work.

In the meantime Caroline, driving to the station, was wondering what Maurice really thought of it, for she knew well enough that he had not told her all his thoughts. He might just as well have done so, for she divined the course they took, and was only ignorant of the strength of his antagonism to the idea. In this, as in smaller matters, she had to distinguish between ideas of his which arose from his true and right attitude to the basic facts of life and conduct, and those prompted by his limited experience. In all essentials she respected his judgment as that of no other man. But in some non-essentials she knew that her own opinion was of more value than his, and that she could influence him. Was this question of her father's marriage one in which she ought to take his view, or be guided by her own wider experience, and influence him towards hers? She was divided between loyalty to her father and loyalty to her husband, but for the present she no more than he was able to solve the problem. She put it from her mind, and gave herself up to pleasure in the prospect of seeing her father again.

But even this pleasure was slightly tinged with doubt. Two strands were interwoven in her love for her father. Of late years he had been so much her preferred companion, and her position in his household had been such, that there had come about a sense of equality more than exists commonly between father and daughter. It was the spirit of companionship that in its fullest measure she had transferred to Maurice, and its transference had thrown into relief again the filial relationship, which had been strengthened by the quality of the love her father had shown towards her over her marriage. He had effaced himself. There had been no flaw in his tender paternal care for her welfare and happiness. Her grateful devotion to him was stronger than ever, but it flowed towards his fatherhood in a fuller degree than of late years. She recognised this change in her and thought that the idea of his marriage to one who had shared with her the happy associations that were not wholly filial would not have perplexed her as it did now if it had arisen a year before. She was not so far from Maurice in her emotions towards it as either of them thought.

But the doubts were all swept away when they met. He was her father, loving and overjoyed to see her again, and apparently as excited at the prospect of playing guest to her hostess as she was.

She had hardly ever seen him in higher spirits than during their drive home together. They laughed together all the time, and she felt the bond between them to be as strong as ever.

Her cup of happiness was full when they reached home and his pleasure showered itself over her husband as well as herself. His greeting of Maurice was of the warmest, and without an atom of constraint. She knew that he had had a struggle with himself to accept him for her sake, and what valiant effort he had made to conceal it. But she felt now at last that the need of effort on his part no longer existed. Maurice was a son to him, at least as much as Dick was. In fact he showed more affection towards him than he habitually showed towards Dick, putting his hand on his shoulder as they stood together for a minute before the fire in the parlour, and chaffing him and Caroline together as two children absurdly but thrillingly placed in a position of responsibility.

When he had been conducted to his room, where Jarvis had made all ready for him to dress for dinner, and Caroline had changed the position of some things on his dressing-table, and Maurice had poked the fire, before withdrawing, they smiled happily at one another. "It's jolly to have him here," said Maurice. "And he is so pleased to see you again."

"You too, darling," said Caroline. "He's awfully sweet to both of us."

"I'm pleased enough to see him," said Maurice. "There's nobody in the world I'd rather have here. He's awfully pleased about Beatrix too."

Grafton had told Caroline on their way home that Beatrix was expecting a child, and a letter from her to Caroline had come by the evening post. They talked about it at intervals during the evening. Caroline laughed at the idea of his becoming a grandfather, but in her slightly altered attitude towards him the relationship seemed more fitting to him than it would have done before. There was no doubt about his pleasure in it.

Ella's name was mentioned, quite naturally by him. "She's been a great consolation to me while you've been away," he said. "Sometimes I haven't missed you in the least, darling. She has been quite like one of the family."

Would he have said this if he had been thinking of giving her the chief place in the family? Maurice thought not, when he and Caroline talked it all over at the end of the evening. His own fears, he told her, were at an end. Her father had allowed Ella to console him for the loss of his daughters, because she had been more like them than anybody else. But it was them he really wanted. Now Caroline had come home that was plain enough to be seen.

Caroline was inclined to think as he did. Her father's high spirits and his obvious pleasure in having her back had made everything just perfect, and the way that he had taken Maurice into it all gave her the idea that he was happier in her new happiness than if he had kept her to himself. Such an attitude relieved her of the uneasy balancing of the claims of husband and father. If his fatherhood could take them both in and sun itself in their happiness, so that the thought of them would always be present with him, there would be much to balance the loss of her companionship to him. He might indeed have almost as much of it as before, since she would always be at Abington when he was there; and to enjoy it with that of Maurice added, so that what had knitted the two of them together would now knit the three, would be a gain all round. It would even heighten her appreciation of her own married happiness, for it would bring Maurice nearer to her in the one big thing in her life that would otherwise tend, however slightly and on the surface, to divide their aims.

She was very happy when she fell asleep, and thought of her dear father lying under her roof, still as near to her as he had ever been. But when she awoke in the night, after realising with some pleasurable emotion that he was there, and not going to sleep again immediately, the doubts began to creep in.

Might not these delightfully high spirits, which she had attributed to his joy in being with her again, and his pleasure in the thought of Beatrix's child coming—might they not have sprung from another source altogether? Ella was coming over to lunch that day, and they were to lunch with her on Sunday. If she was becoming, or had already become, the beloved object, that exhilaration which had made him seem as young as either of them throughout the evening past would be sufficiently accounted for. She knew from her own experience, and from memories of Beatrix, how the joy of loving and being loved effervesces in sparkling merriment, and sheds itself over those who are loved already. It saddened her a little to think that her father's whole-hearted acceptance of Maurice, which had so charmed her that evening, might after all only mean that she herself was no longer of paramount importance to him. His pleasure in their society would remain, but it would not call forth of itself that demonstration of happiness. It would not be they who had caused the years to fall off him.

She could come to no conclusion, except that if he were in the early stage of discovery that he might still love and be loved, it would affect him to just that insurgence of youthful spirit that he had shown throughout the evening.

He was less hilarious in manner the next morning, but still cheerfully content at being where he was. All three of them went down to the Abbey and looked for early flowers in the rock-garden. Then Maurice went off to his work, and he and Caroline went to see the Prescotts, and after that he wrote a long letter to Beatrix while she busied herself with preparations for luncheon.

Ella came, and there was a revival of the high spirits; but all of them shared in it. There was nothing that there had not been scores of times before, when she had been with them and they had all made merry together. Nothing to indicate either in him or in her that the affectionate terms they had always been on now hid something deeper. The affection on either side expressed itself plainly enough, and to an outsider would certainly have seemed to indicate an unusual attraction; but it was what they had gradually come to. She had been given the affection of the family, his no less than theirs, and returned it.

Caroline wrote a long letter to Barbara, when he had gone back to London. "Really, darling, I think you are wrong. She does love him, just as all of us do, and he is awfully sweet to her, as he is to us. It has always been the same, and we have been glad of it. If you had not put it into my head that there might be something more, I should only have felt pleased that she had been able to console him for us all being away. Perhaps I haven't been quite certain, but I do think that if it had been as you think I should have known it. For one thing I think he would have wanted to be alone with her sometimes, and perhaps she with him, if it were she who wanted it, as you seemed to think. But neither of them ever showed any wish at all to be by themselves, even for a minute or two. It was all of us being happy and merry together, as it has always been. And what makes me feel more than anything that it can't be is that darling Dad seems older at the same time that he seems younger. He has been simply adorable to Maurice and me, and Maurice loves him almost as much as I do. And he is in a heaven of delight about precious B, and is going to rush off to her this afternoon the moment he can get away from the Bank. I can't help thinking that if he had it in his mind to begin all over again, for himself, with somebody so much younger, he wouldn't be quite so pleased at the idea of being a grandfather.

"And he was awfully sweet about you too, darling. He made me tell him everything about you, and kept on asking questions about you. He does love you awfully, and it will be splendid when you come home, and can look after him, and make him happy, as B and I have tried to do."

Barbara's fears were not allayed by this letter. "He hasn't said he wants me home," she remarked to herself. "If he had, she'd have said so. I should only be in the way."

Caroline went up to London for a day's shopping that week. She lunched with Lady Grafton, and her father came to meet her, but had to leave immediately afterwards.

"The dear man!" said Lady Grafton. "I've never seen him so pleased with himself. It has given him a new lease of life. If it weren't for his hair you might take him to be about thirty."

They had been talking about Beatrix, and Caroline thought she referred to that. "He'll love being a grandfather," she said. "He'll be like he was to us when we were children, with B's baby."

"Let's hope he'll have babies of his own," said Lady Grafton uncompromisingly. "Most men wouldn't care about it at his age; but he will. He'll dote on them."

Caroline was taken back. Those possibilities had been absent from her mind, though Ella's name had been mentioned more than once. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"Oh, my dear, you can't be as blind as all that. When did you ever see a man in the state he's in unless he was in love, and things were going well with him?"

Caroline was silent.

"Haven't you seen anything?" Lady Grafton asked.

"You mean with Ella?"

"That shows you have. You ought not to be jealous and selfish about it, you know. He hasn't been to you. He behaved extraordinarily well over your marriage."

"I know he did," said Caroline quickly. She wanted no enlightenment of her aunt's opinions upon her marriage. "I shouldn't be jealous or selfish if he wanted that to make him happy. But I don't think he does."

"It's what would make him happy, isn't it? She's a very charming creature, and she's devoted to him. She'd give him all the sort of young brightness that he's had from you, and a lot more besides. I don't say you are selfish. You never have been. But he isn't everything to you any longer, and you can't be everything to him, though I know you'll be everything you can. You ought to be glad that there's somebody who can step in and fill your place."

"Dear Aunt Mary, I think I should be, if I thought it was likely to happen. But you wouldn't expect me not to feel just a little sad that we shouldn't be everything to him any longer, as you say."

This was what Lady Grafton wanted. She did not like Caroline's marriage, and if her affection for her niece prevented her saying so, she was yet in the state of finding relief by being a little hard on her.

"That's only jealousy," she said. "And at bottom it's the jealousy of the young towards those they look upon as elderly. The fact is that George ought to have married again while he was still a young man. Almost any woman would have been glad enough to have him, and with the right sort of woman he'd have been a husband in a thousand. He was, as long as it lasted. He didn't marry again because he devoted himself to all of you instead, and as long as that lasted he had all he wanted, though not as much as he might have had. Now he's lost it. B hardly thinks of him at all, except when she's with him, and of course he's nothing to you beside your husband. I don't blame you for that. It's natural enough, especially when you're first married. But he loses it all the same."

"I don't believe he feels that he's lost it. Maurice is almost as devoted to him as I am."

Lady Grafton refrained from saying: "So he ought to be," and said instead: "I'm glad to hear that," but in a tone that made Caroline regret that she had brought his name in. Of course Aunt Mary was incapable of understanding what she and Maurice together might be to her father. "I do love him," she said, "as much as ever; even more, I think, because he's been so good to me. I don't believe anybody in the world loves their father more than I do. It doesn't make me love him less because I love my husband. He knows that."

"Oh, my dear, we're not talking about all that. You've given him the love of a daughter; so has B, though she hasn't been as careful about it as you have. It was enough for him as long as you were all with him. Now you can no longer be with him it isn't good enough for him, though no doubt it will always count for a good deal. He wants the love and attention in his home, and he has a right to it if he can get it. What you want to do is to keep him tied down to his position as a father, and a grandfather. You can't see that other people may look upon him in quite a different light. He's an unusually attractive man, and extraordinarily well preserved. You've all had something to do with keeping him young, and I've always said so. It isn't every woman, or even every girl, who falls in love with callow youth."

Caroline had something of her father's equability under attack. "I suppose that's a hit at me," she said with a smile. "I shouldn't be surprised, you know, at anybody falling in love with Dad. I know what a darling he is. But I'm not going to take blame to myself for thinking of him more as a father, or even as a grandfather. Do you think Ella loves him in that way? I know she does love him. You've seen her, haven't you, since I've been away?"

"Yes, I've seen her. What I think is that they're both of them absolutely ready for it. But they might be held back, and a great chance of happiness for both of them lost, by doubts of how you would take it. Now I shan't say any more. You'd better think it over."