Caroline thought she meant Lassigny. All that she had been told was that he had given her up. Fortunately she did not answer before Beatrix said: "He won't tell me what's wrong, and what he said to him, to make him go away. Oh, it's very cruel. I do love him, and I shall never love anybody else. And we were so happy together. And now he comes in and spoils it all. I shall never see him again; he said so." Caroline had no difficulty now in disengaging the personalities of the various 'he's' and 'him's.' "Daddy's awfully sad about it, B," she said. "You know he couldn't be cruel to any of us." "He's been cruel to me," said Beatrix. "I came down when he told me to, although I didn't want to, and I made up my mind that if he wanted us to put it off, even for as long as a year, I would ask Rene to, because I did love him and wanted to please him. And he was all right about it last night--and yet all the time he meant to do this. I call that cruel. And what has my poor Rene done? He won't tell me. Has he told you?" "I don't think it's anything that he's done," said Caroline slowly. "He says he isn't----" "Oh, I know," said Beatrix, breaking in on her. "He isn't a fit husband for me. He told me that. How does he know? He says he only talked to him for ten minutes, and then he said something that made him go away. Oh, why did he go away like that? He does love me, I know. Isn't he ever going to try to see me again, or even to write to me, to say good-bye?" Caroline's heart was torn, but she couldn't merely soothe and sympathise with her. "It's frightfully hard for you, darling, I know," she said. "But he wouldn't just have gone away and given you up--M. de Lassigny, I mean--if Daddy hadn't been right about him." "Oh, of course, you take his side!" said Beatrix. "I trusted him too, and he's been cruel to me." Caroline helped her to bed. Her heart was heavy, both for Beatrix and for her father. She tried no more to defend him. It was of no use at present. Beatrix must work that out for herself. At present she was more in need of consolation than he was, and she tried her best to give it to her. But that was of little use either. Her grievance against her father was now rising to resentment. As she poured out her trouble, which after all did give her some relief, although she was unaware of it, Caroline could only say, "Oh, no, B darling, you mustn't say that"; or, "You know how much he loves you; he must be right about it." But in the end she was a little shaken in her own faith. She thought that Beatrix ought to have known more. She would have wanted to know more herself, if she had been in her place. Later on in the evening she and Miss Waterhouse sat with him in the library, to which he had taken himself instinctively after dinner, as the room of the master of the house. Caroline had told him, what there was no use in keeping back, that Beatrix thought he had been unjust to her, and he was very unhappy.