If only he had known that on the night before the meet at Wilborough Beatrix had forgotten to prop Lassigny's photograph up against the emergency candlestick on her table! It had been in its usual place when he had gone into her room with the news that it was a fine hunting morning, a kiss and a word of censure for sleepy little girls who let their tea grow cold. He often began in that way, recognising her childishness, and the fact that so short a time ago she had been all his. Then the sight of that alien figure, to whom she had ceded the greater part of his rights in her, who could in no way be brought into the fabric of his life and his love, would stiffen him, dimming his sense of fatherhood and protection. Antagonism was taking its place, and a sense of injury. After all, he had given way. She had what she wanted, or would have when the period of probation was over, with no further opposition from him. Why couldn't she be towards him as she had been before? She was changing under his eyes. It was only rarely now that he could think of her as his loving devoted little daughter.
The worst of it, for him, was that he had now no confidants to whom he could express himself as to the unhappiness and dissatisfaction that was working in him. Caroline, whose love for him and dependence upon him was an assuagement, yet did not seem to be wholly on his side. She seemed to be playing, as it were, a waiting game. The affair would be settled, one way or the other, when the six months had run their course. It was better not to talk of it in the meantime. She was all sympathy with him when he showed himself hurt and troubled by Beatrix's changed attitude, and he knew that she 'spoke' to Beatrix about it. But that did no good, and he could not use one daughter as a go-between with the other. Miss Waterhouse, having sagely expressed herself at the time when the affair was still in flux, had retired again into her shell. Worthing also took it for granted that, as he had conditionally given way, there was no more that could profitably be said about it until the time came for his promise to be redeemed; and perhaps not even then. If Lassigny should come to be accepted as a son-in-law, the obvious thing for him to do was to make the best of him.
Ah, but Worthing had no daughter of his own. He didn't know how hard it was to take second place, and to depend for all the solacing signs of affection from a beloved child upon whether or no he was prepared to accept a disliked and mistrusted figure as merged into hers.
It is true that the Vicar had offered him his sympathy. At first Grafton had thought that he had misjudged him when he had come to him with a tale of how troubled he had been that Mollie Walter seemed to have been backing up Beatrix in setting herself against his will, how his wife thought the same, and—although he would never have thought of asking her to do so—had of her own accord spoken to Mrs. Walter about it. Grafton had been a little disturbed at finding that the Vicar seemed to know 'all about everything'; but the Vicar had expressed himself so rightly, commending him for the stand he had taken, and the reasons for it, that any doubts he may have come to feel as to whether he had been justified in his opposition to Lassigny's suit, had been greatly lessened. The Vicar thought as he did about it; even rather more strongly. The innocence of girlhood was a most precious thing, and a father who should insist that it should mate with nothing but a corresponding innocence was taking a stand that all men who loved righteousness must thank him for. As an accredited and official lover of righteousness the Vicar perhaps rather overdid his sympathy, which required for expression more frequent visits to the Abbey and a return to a more intimate footing there than he had lately enjoyed. Grafton did not want to be forever discussing the general question of male misdeeds and feminine innocence with a man who appeared from his conversation to have shed all traces of human infirmity except that of curiosity. And there was a good deal too much of Mollie Walter brought into it. What had Mollie Walter to do with it, or he with her? Or indeed the Vicar with her, if it came to that? It seemed that he feared the same sort of danger for her that Grafton had so rightly and courageously warded off for Beatrix. Grafton knew what and whom he referred to, and put aside his proferred confidence. He also began to close up to intimate references to Beatrix's innocence, and came to dislike Beatrix's name on the Vicar's lips.
The end of it had been that the Vicar had been returned to his Vicarage, politely but indubitably, with nothing gained but another topic of acrid conversation with his wife.
But there was one other person to whom Grafton was beginning to unburden himself.
CHAPTER XXI
A FINE HUNTING MORNING
The big dining-room of Wilborough Hall, with a table at one end of it as a buffet, was full of people eating and drinking and talking and laughing. As Grafton and Barbara and Young George went in, they saw few there whom they did not know, and among the crowd there were many who could already be counted as friends.