She hesitated a little. "It was unreasonable," she said, "but if you hadn't sent him away, this wouldn't have happened."
He was silent for a time, and she was a little alarmed. He had been much ruffled too; there were bristles to be smoothed away with him as well as with Beatrix. But she was too honest not to want to tell him everything.
He relieved her immensely by laughing. "He's what she has found him out to be," he said, "and she's well out of it. But if I hadn't done what I did, she'd have been well in it by this time. Poor darling! She's been hurt, and she wants to hit out all round. I dare say she didn't spare you, did she?"
Caroline laughed in her turn. "I didn't know anything about it," she said. "I didn't know what love meant. She has told me that before, you know. Perhaps I don't know what that sort of love means, and that's why I didn't think about it quite as you did, Dad. But she asked me to forgive her for saying that, and other things, before I left her. She's very sweet, poor darling. She hates hurting anybody."
They sat silent for a time. The fire of logs wheezed and glowed in the open hearth. Round them was the deep stillness of the night and the sleeping house—that stillness of the country which brings with it a sense of security, so little likely is it to be disturbed, but also, sometimes, almost a sense of terror, if solitary nerves are on edge. To-night it was only peace that lapped them round, sitting there in full companionship and affection.
Presently Grafton said, with a sigh of relief: "Thank God it's all over. I'm only just beginning to feel it. We shall be all together again. It has spoilt a lot of the pleasure of this place."
"We've been here a year now," she said. "And we've had some very happy times. It's been better, even, than we thought it would."
"I wish we'd done it before. I think it was Aunt Mary who said once that we ought to have done it ten years ago if we had wanted to get the full benefit out of it."
"What did she mean by the full benefit?"
He thought for a moment, and then did not answer her question directly. "It's the family life that takes hold of you," he said. "If it's a happy one nothing else counts beside it. That's what this business of B's has put in danger. Now it's over, I can see how great the danger has been."