Miss Waterhouse and Barbara had stayed at Abington ever since they had moved down there. Caroline had only been up to London once for the inside of the week, although the season was now in full swing, and it had never been intended that they should not be chiefly in London until the end of it. The time for moving up had been put off and put off. The country was so delightful in the late spring and early summer. After Whitsuntide perhaps they would move up to London. But it had never been definitely settled that they should do so, and hitherto Caroline had seemed quite content to miss all her parties, and to enjoy her days in the garden and in the country, and her evenings in the quiet house. Beatrix had been presented, and had been hard at it in London, staying with her aunt, Lady Handsworth, and enjoying herself exceedingly. But she had come down to Abington twice with her father. Abington was home now, and weighed even against the pleasures of a first London season. The Whitsuntide guests were Lord Handsworth, Grafton's brother-in-law, with his wife and daughter, a girl of about Caroline's age, Sir James and Lady Grafton, the Marquis de Clermont-Lassigny, the Honourable Francis Parry, and one or two more out of that army of Londoners who are to be found scattered all over the country houses of England on certain days of the week at certain times of the year. Lassigny was one of those men who appear very English when they are in England and very French when they are in France. He was a handsome man, getting on in the thirties. He had been attached to the French Embassy in London, but had inherited wealth from an American mother, and had relinquished a diplomatic career to enjoy himself, now in Paris, now in London, and sometimes even in his fine chateau in Picardy, which had been saved for him by his mother's dollars. It was supposed that he was looking out for an English wife, if he could find one to his taste, but his pursuit during many visits to England spread over some years had not been very arduous. He had danced a good deal with Caroline during her two seasons; and her aunt, who had taken her about, as she now took Beatrix, had rather expected that something might come of it. Caroline had always thought she knew better. Her virginal indifference to the approaches of men had not prevented her from appreciating the signs of special devotion, and she had seen none in Lassigny. He had been very friendly, and she liked the friendship of men. It would hardly have been too much to say of her, at the age of twenty-one, and after two full seasons and the months of country house visiting that had passed with them, that she was still in the schoolgirl state of thinking that anything approaching love-making 'spoilt things.' She was rather too experienced to hold that view in its entirety, but it was hers in essence; she had never wanted the signs of attraction in any man to go beyond the point at which they made agreeable the friendship.