"My dear boy," Grafton said, "I've got to trust you. She does. It's all I want of you, that you should make her happy, all her life. I've made her happy up till now. But a father can't complete his daughter's life, however much he loves her. Only a husband can do that. She believes you're the one man in the world who can give her all she wants, and because she believes it, I'm bound to believe it too. Tell me the course of life you have in your mind for yourselves. I know you've talked it over together, but I told her I'd rather have it from you. I want to get into complete sympathy with you as well as with her."
"I know it must be difficult for you, Mr. Grafton," the boy said. "We are both very grateful to you for the way you have treated me. I didn't expect you'd be so kind about it. She said you would be, but I think I can see more clearly than she does what a difference there is between us. In the way you'd look at it, I think I see it just as clearly as you do."
"Well, I'm glad you've said that, Maurice. I suppose a father is apt to think about the material side of marriage for his daughters more than the other. I think he's right to do it, because with the experience he has reached he knows well enough that the material side of a marriage is a lot more important than two young people who have fallen in love with one another are likely to see for themselves. It mustn't be left out of account with you two. That's why I want to know what your ideas are—as to the way you've planned it out for yourselves."
"We look at it like this," he answered at once. "A very simple life, in the country, will give both of us what we most want. It's easy enough for me, because it's more than I've ever had. Even the way I live with Mr. Worthing, and coming here, and going to other houses like this, is more than I've had. I should expect to be able to get to that by what I can earn, by and bye, but of course it's much less than Caroline has been used to. I've thought about it a great deal, and tried to take into account everything that she would be losing by marrying me—to see whether she ought not to lose any of it."
"Well, what do you think she will be losing?"
"The biggest thing, which would trouble me greatly if I thought she would lose it because of me, would be the way you and her own family would look upon her. If it wouldn't make any difference—"
"Well, it won't make any difference to me. I've assured you of that already."
"I'm rather afraid of how Beatrix will take it."
"Beatrix won't like it, Maurice. We'd better look it all in the face. I don't know how her life will turn out, but it will never be so free of the world as Caroline's will. She isn't built on the same lines, and they won't come together on the deepest things in Caroline's life. She won't understand them. But they love one another, and they'll go on loving one another."
"Yes, I think so. It was you I thought most about. Then her other relations, and all the people she has lived among, and I haven't. She will be cut off from them. Not entirely, where they are real friends; but she will no longer be living their life, and I'm not fitted to live it. She won't be able to see so much even of those who would want her, and she would like to see. She won't be able to pay many visits, or go much to London. She will miss all the clever interesting people she has constantly met, and being in the world, and part of it, as she has been."