Lassigny, then, seemed to have acted with correctness. But that he should have done so did not remove any objection to him as a husband for Beatrix. It only made it rather more difficult to meet him; for Beatrix's father would not be upheld by justifiable annoyance at having been treated with disrespect.
"I'm glad he didn't come down with you," he said.
"I wanted him to," she said simply. "But he wouldn't. He said you might not like it. He is such a dear, Daddy. He thinks of everything. I do love him." She got up and stood over him and kissed him. "I love you too, darling," she said, "more than ever. It makes you love everybody you do love more, when this happens to you."
He couldn't face it, with his arm round her, and her soft cheek resting confidently against his. He couldn't break up her happiness and her trust there and then. Better see the fellow first. By some miracle he might show himself worthy of her. His dislike of him for the moment was in abeyance. It rested on nothing that he knew of him—only on what he had divined.
"Well," he said; "we'd better go to bed and think it all over. I'll see him to-morrow."
"He's coming here about twelve," she said, releasing herself as he stood up. "If you are in the City I can tell him to go down and see you at the Bank."
"No," he said, "I will see him here. And I don't want you to see him before I do, B. We've got to begin it all over again, in the proper way. That's why I made you come here."
His slight change of tone caused her to look up at him. "You're not going to ask him to wait for me, are you, darling?" she asked. "We do want to get married soon. We do love each other awfully."
He kissed her. "Run along to bed," he said. "I'll tell you what I have decided when I've seen him to-morrow."
When they met at breakfast the next morning the atmosphere had hardened a little. Beatrix was not so affectionate to him in her manner as she had been; it was plain that she was not thinking of him much, except in his connection with her lover; and as the love she had shown him the night before had softened him towards the whole question, so now the absence of its signs hardened him. Of course her love for him was nothing in comparison with this new love of hers! He was a fool to have let it influence him. If he had been weak enough to let her go to bed thinking that he would make no objection to her eventual engagement, and only formalities stood in the way, it would be all the harder for her when she knew the truth.