He had felt the force of this. Though he hoped to keep Caroline with him for a time longer, the thought of her eventual marriage was never quite absent from his thoughts about her. He did not want it to be, necessarily, what is called a brilliant marriage, though with a girl of Caroline's beauty and charm the most brilliant of marriages would not be more than her due; but he did want her to marry among the people with whom both sides of her family had been connected now for some generations past, and that was conditional, as it seemed to him, upon her keeping 'in the swim.' There was an idea at the back of his mind that her whole-hearted love of a country life was rather unsettling her for the right sort of marriage. It seemed actually to have been responsible for her unwillingness to accept the young man whom for some time past he had thought, not without satisfaction, that she might marry. Francis Parry was still in love with her, and a year ago she had refused him in such a way as not to have made him relinquish all hope of winning her. The young man had told Grafton so rather pathetically not so long before. He had not bothered her, he had said, but wasn't she getting tired of shutting herself away from everybody? Was his chance absolutely gone? The question had made Grafton bethink himself. When Caroline had definitely refused Francis for the second time a year before he had been well content to have it so. She had said that she had always liked him, and given her father to understand that when she should be ready to marry he would be such a husband as she would choose. It was because she was so happy at home that she did not want to marry yet. But now he was not so sure that it would be a man of the type of Francis Parry whom she would choose. She seemed to have moved away from the sort of life he represented, which was exactly the sort of life that he himself had represented, and to which his daughters had been brought up. The fact that he had refrained hitherto with her from any reference to the young man's plea, although they had talked him over together frankly enough before, showed the extent of his doubts about her. Although he sympathised with her strong preference for this quiet stay-at-home country life, and to a large extent shared it, it seemed almost as if she were moving away from him. They came to the high beechwood from which the famous view was to be seen. They sat on their horses, and drank in the tonic air which came from the sea across miles of open country. The sun was now high in the sky, and a line of silver in the far distance fulfilled their expectations. For in most conditions of atmosphere the view of the sea was by faith and not by sight. "Isn't it heavenly!" said Caroline. "Oh, Dad, you must leave me to this; I want to live all my life with it. I shouldn't mind if I never saw London again."