"I think that's perfectly true," said Grafton, in an easy voice. "A father can't hope to be first when his daughters marry, but he'll generally remain second. Well, when my daughters do marry I shall be content to take that position, and I shall always remember you warned me that I should have to. Thank you very much." "Ah, now you're laughing at me," she said, looking up in his face, "but you're angry all the same. You ought not to be angry. I'm telling you the woman's side. When a woman loves a man she loves him whatever he is, and if he hasn't been quite what he ought, if she's a good woman she can make him different. That's what she thinks, and she's right to think it. The chance of trying ought not to be took from her." "Perhaps not," said Grafton. "But in this case it has been taken from her by the man himself. It comes down to that first and last, Lady Mansergh. It's very kind of you to interest yourself in the matter, but really there's nothing to be done, except to encourage Beatrix to forget all about it. If you'll take your part in doing that, you'll be doing her a good turn, and me too." "There is something to be done, and you could do it," she said. "That's to write and tell the Marquis that you spoke hurriedly. However, I know you won't do it, so I shan't press you any more." "No, I don't propose to do that," he said. "And now I think we'll talk about something else." It was difficult to be angry with the stout kind-hearted lady herself, but Grafton was angry over the episode--more angry than he had been over any other. He and Caroline had come over in the little car that he drove himself, and he talked to her about it going back. "It's really intolerable that a woman like that should be mixed up in it," he said. "She's a good-hearted old thing, but she hasn't exactly the sort of history that makes her a person to consult in an affair like this. If B has so far forgotten herself as to make a confidant of Lady Mansergh it's time I talked to her about it. I've just let it alone so far, and hoped she'd recover herself by degrees. But she seems to be making her grievance public property, and she must leave off doing that." "I don't think she _can_ have said anything to Lady Mansergh," said Caroline, rather doubtful about it, all the same. "I think Geoffrey Mansergh must have told her. He knows a lot of people that we do."