The dusk came on, and the park emptied itself. The lawns and the water seen between the tree trunks were silvered by the moon to mysterious beauty. "It's like a scene in a play," said Barbara. "Do let's have one more little walk round, Dad." She and Young George hurried off to the lake, while Grafton paid the bill, and Caroline stayed with him. Then they followed the other two. Caroline slipped her hand into her father's arm. "Darling," she said, "don't let it worry you--meeting him. It's bound to have happened some time or other. We've got it over now." "I'm glad B wasn't here," was all he said. "So am I. But if she had wanted curing, I think that would have cured her. Fancy choosing that for his wife, after knowing B!" "It wasn't his wife," he said quickly. Caroline was silent, blushing to the roots of her hair in the darkness. Then she said: "I think I should have come to know that--afterwards. I felt there was something. Oh, Dad, supposing it had been B he had married, and that had happened!" "Yes," he said. "And your Aunt Katharine and Mary and the rest of them were all at me for trying to stop it. And B almost cut herself off from me, because--because I knew what would happen if she did marry him." She was struck with compunction because she also had thought him not altogether reasonable in his dislike for Lassigny, whom he had not disliked, but had invited to his house, before his engagement to Beatrix. She had liked him herself, and had known him longer than Beatrix had. Now she had a horror of him. All her soul, unsullied by the thought of evil, revolted against what had been forced upon it. Her father had known all along what he was. It had not prevented his treating him as a friend, or permitting him to associate with his daughters. She put that fact away in her mind, for consideration later. But he too had revolted, when it had come to giving up one of his daughters to him. And yet, as he had said, all the pressure had been against him, and if Lassigny had come back for Beatrix at the end of the six months in which it had been agreed he was not to see her, he would have given her up to him.