The idea still shocked him a little, and for the first time he was unwilling to express all his thoughts to Caroline, for they would seem to reflect upon her father. His simplicity and singleness of purpose went along with some rigidity of mind and outlook. Life presented itself to him in elementary forms, and his ideas, born partly from his very limited experience, had not yet fully expanded under the influence of the great change that had come to himself. It was a man's right course to find his work in the world and to give himself up to it. All the rest would be added in due season, and he must not step out of his path to seek it for himself. He had lately learned that work can have a consecration that will lift it to a still higher plane of rightness; but that discovery had only settled his convictions. He did not think of Grafton as a man who had ever put his work in its proper place. He had seen him only enjoying the fruits of it, and depending upon those fruits for most of his contentment in life. He might not acknowledge it, even to himself, of Caroline's father, and certainly he would not have acknowledged it to her, but his tendency was to regard a man to whom life came so easily as it did to Grafton as liable to be weakened in fibre. He might take to himself gratifications that did not legitimately belong to him. In some respects the conventions of youth are more binding than those of age. Maurice would not have been disturbed at the idea of his father-in-law married again, to a lady of ripe age. He could not accustom himself to the idea of his falling in love at the age of fifty-one, and hoped that Barbara's fears would prove to be unfounded. They went home by way of Havre and Southampton, and reached Abington without going to London. The Abbey was empty. Miss Waterhouse was away visiting, and Grafton was tied to the Bank that week. He was to stay at Stone Cottage over the week-end and Caroline made the most loving preparations for his reception. Her happiness, but for the cloud brought by Barbara's fears, which try as she would she could not treat otherwise than as a cloud, was complete. The cottage, which had been renovated for them throughout, was as charming a little house as any newly married couple could wish to inhabit. Her father had offered to enlarge it for her, but she had wanted to run it on a modest scale, with only one servant, and as the wife of a poor man to do a great deal in it herself. Electric light had been installed, and a sumptuously fitted bathroom. Otherwise, except for its new paint and papers, it was as Mollie Pemberton and her mother had made themselves happy in.