Well, he would find that out. The fellow should have his chance. He would not take it for granted that he had just taken a fancy--the latest of many--to a pretty face, and the charm and freshness of a very young girl; and since she happened to be of the sort that he could marry, was willing to gain possession of her in that way. Lassigny was announced a little after twelve o'clock. His card was brought in: "Marquis de Clermont-Lassigny," in letters of print, all on a larger scale than English orthodoxy dictates. His card was vaguely distasteful to Grafton. But when he went in to him, in the old-fashioned parlour reserved for visitors, he could not have told, if he had not known, that he was not an Englishman. His clothes were exactly 'right' in every particular. His dark moustache was clipped to the English fashion. His undoubted good looks were not markedly of the Latin type. The two men shook hands, Lassigny with a smile, Grafton without one. "You had my letter?" Lassigny asked. "Yes," said Grafton, motioning him to a chair and taking one himself. "It ought to have been written," said Lassigny, "before I spoke to Beatrix. But I trust you will understand it was not from want of respect to you that it wasn't. I have come now to ask your permission--to affiance myself to your daughter." "I wish you hadn't," said Grafton, looking at him with a half-smile. He couldn't treat this man whom he had last seen as a welcome guest in his own house as the enemy he had since felt him to be. Lassigny made a slight gesture with shoulders and hands that was not English. "Ah," he said, "she is very young, and you don't want to lose her. She said you would feel like that. I shouldn't want to lose her myself if she were my daughter. But I hope you will give her to me, all the same. I did not concern myself with business arrangements in my letter, but my lawyers----" "Oh, we haven't come to talking about lawyers yet," Grafton interrupted him. "Look here, Lassigny; Beatrix is hardly more than a child; you ought not to have made love to her without at least coming to me first. You wouldn't do it in your own country, you know." He had not meant to say that, or anything like it. But it was very difficult to know what to say. "In my own country," said Lassigny "--but you must remember that I am only half French--one makes love, and one also marries. The two things don't of necessity go together. But I have known England for a long enough time to prefer the English way." This was exactly the opening that Grafton wanted, but had hardly expected to be given in so obvious a way. "Exactly so!" he said, leaning forward a little, with his arm on the table by his side. "You marry and you make love, and the two things don't go together. Well, with us they do go together; and that's why I won't let my daughters marry anybody but Englishmen, if I can help it."