"I don't know. If I thought I did I'd tell you so. But why should you hate it? He's just like an Englishman. And he's rich, with an old property and all that sort of thing. He isn't like an adventurer, with a title that comes from nobody knows where. He'd be a very good match. Why should you hate it?"
"I should hate one of the girls to marry a foreigner. I've never thought of such a thing. I don't want either of them to marry yet—certainly not my little B. I want them at home for a bit. I haven't had enough of them yet. We're all going to enjoy ourselves together here for a year or two. They like it as much as I do. Even B, who's enjoying herself in London, likes to come here best,—bless her. She's having her fling. I like 'em to do that; and they're not like other girls, always on the lookout for men. They make friends of them but they like their old father best, after all. It can't always be so, I know, but I'm not going to lose them yet awhile, Mary."
"Well, George, you're very lucky in your girls, I will say that; and you deserve some credit for it, too. You haven't left them to go their own way while you went yours, as lots of men in your position would have done. The consequence is they adore you. And they always will. But you can't expect to be first with them when their time comes. You've had Caroline now for two years since she's grown up, and——"
"Well, what about her? There's nobody head over heels in love with her, is there?"
"I don't know about head over heels. But Francis Parry is in love with her, and you'll have him proposing very shortly, if he hasn't done it already."
"Oh, my dear Mary, you're letting your matchmaking tendencies get the better of you. Now you relieve my mind—about B I mean. If there's no more in it than that!"
"Oh, I know what you think. They've been pals, and all that sort of thing, for years. If there had been more than that it would have come out long ago. Well, you'll see. I say that it's coming out now. It does happen like that, you know, sometimes."
Grafton was inclined to doubt it. He liked Francis Parry, who would be just the right sort of match for Caroline besides, if it should take them in that sort of way, later on. But that sort of way did not include a sudden 'falling in love' at the end of some years' frank and free companionship, during which neither of them had been in the least inclined to pine at such times as they saw little of one another. They were both of them much too sensible. Their liking for one another gave the best sort of promise for happiness in married life, if they should, by and by, decide to settle down together. They had been friends for years and they would go on being friends, all their lives. The same could not be said for all married couples, nor perhaps even for the majority of them, who had begun by being violently in love with one another. That, at any rate, could hardly have happened within the last few days. Mary, who had certainly not fallen violently in love with James, though she was undoubtedly fond of him, and made him a very good wife, was over-sentimental in these matters, and had seen what she had wanted to see.
He had a slight shock of surprise, however, not altogether agreeable, when Caroline, during the course of the morning, told him of what had happened to her.
She linked her arm affectionately in his. "Come for a stroll, darling," she said. "It's rather nice to have got rid of everybody, and be just ourselves again, isn't it?"