"Beatrix won't like it, Maurice. We'd better look it all in the face. I don't know how her life will turn out, but it will never be so free of the world as Caroline's will. She isn't built on the same lines, and they won't come together on the deepest things in Caroline's life. She won't understand them. But they love one another, and they'll go on loving one another." "Yes, I think so. It was you I thought most about. Then her other relations, and all the people she has lived among, and I haven't. She will be cut off from them. Not entirely, where they are real friends; but she will no longer be living their life, and I'm not fitted to live it. She won't be able to see so much even of those who would want her, and she would like to see. She won't be able to pay many visits, or go much to London. She will miss all the clever interesting people she has constantly met, and being in the world, and part of it, as she has been." Grafton laughed. "She'll have told you that she has already reconciled herself to not living much in the world," he said. "Yes, she has. But I had to ask myself for her whether she wouldn't miss it more than she thinks. She has a great deal of it still--here. She wouldn't have nearly so much. And of course all that it means living in a house like this she would lose,--what she has grown used to, and doesn't think about, because she has always had it. I can see how different her life would be." "I think you've faced it all pretty straight, Maurice, except that she'll lose consideration in the world. How does that strike you?" He hesitated a moment. "I don't think it matters," he said. "Perhaps it doesn't. But why don't you think it matters?" "Because nothing that she will be if she marries me will be less than what she has been. Everybody whose opinion she would value would know that." "Well, I think you've got that right too. And as for all the rest--there's a certain way of living that one wouldn't like to see one's daughter fall below; but it doesn't depend upon big houses, or a lot of money. There's no reason why she shouldn't have it. I do think myself, that with a girl like Caroline, so suited to take her place in the best sort of society that the world has to offer, it's a pity she shouldn't have it. But we've had that out together and she says she doesn't want it. She wants something else, which she thinks is better. I wish she could have had both; but if not, she's made her choice, with her eyes open, and I'm not going to say that I think she's wrong. She won't be losing everything that she has been brought up to either. What are your ideas about getting married?" "We haven't talked about it much yet. It's for the future, when we can see ourselves settled somewhere." Grafton sat thinking for some time. Then he got up from his chair. "Well, I expect you'll want to see Caroline now," he said. "I must go down and write some letters." CHAPTER XVII HOW THEY TOOK IT