"Well, Mary, you've put it sensibly at last. But you're wrong in several particulars, all the same. If it were as simple and obvious as all that I should agree with you; so would Caroline, for that matter, and she wouldn't want to marry him. What you've missed altogether is that the boy has character. I've come to see it already, and he'll grow into something that she can be proud of. Another thing you've missed is that she really doesn't want to live in the usual round. She has kept herself almost entirely out of it for the last eighteen months, because she likes her quiet country life better. She'll have that with him, and she'll get more companionship in the sort of things she likes doing than with a fellow like Francis Parry, for instance." "Ah, poor Francis! I don't know what _he'll_ say when he hears about it. Fancy preferring young Bradby to a man like that! Well, if Caroline really does, and you're going to back her up in it, she's not quite what I thought she was, and I suppose I'd better let it alone." "I really think you had, Mary. If Caroline isn't quite what you thought she was, I assure you she hasn't deteriorated. As far as I'm concerned there's something in all your jibes, but not as much as you think there is. I do hate losing my girls. They've been more to me than most daughters are to their fathers, because I've only had them. But because I feel like that, I should be all the more careful not to let it affect my actions towards them. My thoughts perhaps I can't help it affecting. And it's true that I shrink from going through with Caroline what I did with B. But that wouldn't deter me from standing out if I saw good reason to do so. I don't; so I'm not going to spoil things by giving in grudgingly." "You're even going to hurry on the marriage, I hear. And you're providing them with a house--of course at Abington. I don't object to that though. Caroline won't lose everything that she's been used to having, and if you get rather more of her society than you're entitled to, perhaps you deserve it, as you're acting so nobly." Which left the last word with Lady Grafton. Lady Handsworth was not so critical. She said that she did not understand it, but she seemed more ready than Lady Grafton to agree that any man whom Caroline loved must be worth loving. She thought it a pity that Grafton should not allow time to work, as he might well have done under all the circumstances, instead of making it possible for Caroline to marry at once without giving her time to think better of it. But Lady Handsworth had never seen Maurice, and did not regard him, as Lady Grafton did, as below the point of gentility with which Caroline ought to ally herself. So her objections were not likely to be so strong, and Grafton managed to satisfy her that holding out would not alter matters, and that an early marriage would make for Caroline's happiness.