"That shows you have. You ought not to be jealous and selfish about it, you know. He hasn't been to you. He behaved extraordinarily well over _your_ marriage." "I know he did," said Caroline quickly. She wanted no enlightenment of her aunt's opinions upon her marriage. "I shouldn't be jealous or selfish if he wanted that to make him happy. But I don't think he does." "It's what _would_ make him happy, isn't it? She's a very charming creature, and she's devoted to him. She'd give him all the sort of young brightness that he's had from you, and a lot more besides. I don't say you _are_ selfish. You never have been. But he isn't everything to you any longer, and you can't be everything to him, though I know you'll be everything you can. You ought to be glad that there's somebody who can step in and fill your place." "Dear Aunt Mary, I think I should be, if I thought it was likely to happen. But you wouldn't expect me not to feel just a little sad that we shouldn't be everything to him any longer, as you say." This was what Lady Grafton wanted. She did not like Caroline's marriage, and if her affection for her niece prevented her saying so, she was yet in the state of finding relief by being a little hard on her. "That's only jealousy," she said. "And at bottom it's the jealousy of the young towards those they look upon as elderly. The fact is that George ought to have married again while he was still a young man. Almost any woman would have been glad enough to have him, and with the right sort of woman he'd have been a husband in a thousand. He was, as long as it lasted. He didn't marry again because he devoted himself to all of you instead, and as long as _that_ lasted he had all he wanted, though not as much as he might have had. Now he's lost it. B hardly thinks of him at all, except when she's with him, and of course he's nothing to you beside your husband. I don't blame you for that. It's natural enough, especially when you're first married. But he loses it all the same." "I don't believe he feels that he's lost it. Maurice is almost as devoted to him as I am." Lady Grafton refrained from saying: "So he ought to be," and said instead: "I'm glad to hear that," but in a tone that made Caroline regret that she had brought his name in. Of course Aunt Mary was incapable of understanding what she and Maurice together might be to her father. "I do love him," she said, "as much as ever; even more, I think, because he's been so good to me. I don't believe anybody in the world loves their father more than I do. It doesn't make me love him less because I love my husband. He knows that."