He talked up and down about it for some time, and then said, with a reversion to the direct speech that was more characteristic of him: "She's bound to think I've been unjust to her, I suppose. Do you think so too?" Miss Waterhouse did not reply. Caroline said, after a short pause: "I think if I were B I should want to know why you thought he wasn't fit for me. If it's anything that he's done----" "It's the way he and men like him look upon marriage," he said. "I can't go into details--I really can't, either to you or her." "But if he loves her very much--mightn't it be all right with them?" "Yes, it might," he answered without any hesitation. "If he loved her in the right way." "Are you quite sure he doesn't, darling? If he had a chance of proving it!" "He hasn't asked for the chance." "It really comes back to that," said Miss Waterhouse, speaking almost for the first time. "You would not have refused him his chance, if he had asked for it?" "I don't know. I don't think I should. If he had said that his loving Beatrix made things different to him--if he'd shown in any way that they were different to him--I don't know what I should have done. It certainly wouldn't have ended as it did." "Well, Cara dear," said Miss Waterhouse, "I think the thing to say is that M. de Lassigny was not prepared to satisfy your father that he even wanted to be what he thought B's husband ought to be. If he had gone ever such a little way he would have had his chance." "It is he who has given her up. I know that," said Caroline. "You didn't really send him away at all, did you? Oh, I'm sure you must have been right about him. I liked him, you know; but-- He can't love B very much, I should think, if he was willing to give her up like that, at once." That was the question upon which the unhappy clash of interests turned during the days that followed. Beatrix knew that he loved her. How could she make a mistake about that? She turned a little from Caroline, who was very loving to her but would not put herself unreservedly on her side, and poured out all her griefs to Barbara, and also to Mollie Walter. Barbara, not feeling herself capable of pronouncing upon anything on her own initiative, took frequent counsel of Miss Waterhouse, who advised her to be as sweet to B as possible, but not to admit that their father could have been wrong in the way he had acted. "There is no need to say that M. de Lassigny was," she said. "Poor B will see that for herself in time."