She thought of the mother whom she had known and loved as a child, and still loved, as she knew he did. If she had been alive he would not thus have come to the end of most of what had made his home dear to him. She wondered what it would have felt like to come home from her honeymoon and find her mother waiting for her. Her old home would not have lost so much of its meaning if she had been there. But she did not think much about herself except to ask what she could do to make up to her father for his loss. She thought, rather sadly on his behalf, that the very perfection of their family life must make the change worse for him. She would be much with him when he came down to Abington, but not the constant companion she had been hitherto. He had done hardly anything there without her, and she had devoted herself to him as now she would devote herself to her husband. She had gained immeasurably, and a great part of her gain was his loss. She knew that she had been more to him than any of the others, and that he had come more and more to depend upon her. She had loved him to come to her with any new idea or discovery, which would have lost half its value to him unless they had shared it. His letters since her marriage had been full of little jokes and felicities to which he had wanted her response; and she had always given it, but with the knowledge that it was no longer to him that she would take her own little discoveries and appreciations, and that he might sooner or later, unless she was very careful, be saddened by the change in her. He would never claim more than his right, but the change would be there, of necessity, and the loss to him. Ought she not to be glad if he had found some one in whom his affections and home-loving desires could centre themselves again--some one who would give him back the devotion that he so richly deserved. It was natural that poor little Barbara should think that her turn had come to be his chosen companion, and resent the intrusion of another into the place she was so touchingly anxious to fill. But Barbara could not be expected to realise that her part would probably only be played for a few years at the most, and that when she left home the change would fall upon him still more heavily. And by that time his chance of winning for himself what he might want would be less. Perhaps it would have disappeared altogether. Caroline thought that her father would not deliberately set himself to choose a wife with whom he might be happy. But if a woman so beautiful and so suited to him in mind as Ella were to show him now that she loved him well enough to marry him--surely his children who loved him should do nothing to dim the happiness that might be his! And yet she was not quite happy about it. CHAPTER XXI A VISIT Preparations for her father's visit were a serious affair with Caroline, and with Maurice too, for he saw how much it meant to her, and loved every manifestation of her personality.