[CHAPTER XVIII]
MORE OPINIONS
The House in Cadogan Place had been given up, and Grafton had taken a flat. Beatrix dined with him there on Monday. Dick was stationed at Chatham, but was unable to get away that evening.
Beatrix was radiantly happy, and more beautiful than ever. She was growing up to herself all round. Every time that he saw her, Grafton congratulated himself anew upon having saved her from that other marriage. Perhaps at first she would have shown herself just as happy in it; but he would always have been looking for developments, and changes, none of which he would have expected to be for the better. Now he knew that all her charm of character could find safe play, and add to her own happiness and the happiness of those about her, and that its deeper qualities would be brought into being too, fostered and strengthened. There was a quality of all-round fitness in her marriage upon which he, who loved her, could rest himself with pleasure. And she was always demonstratively affectionate towards him when they met, though not quite in the same way as she had been before her marriage. All her thoughts were centred in Dick, and if he had not been prepared to accept Dick as deserving of all that she gave him, he would have felt the difference. But there was nothing about Dick that he did not like and respect. He had taken him in, as he had told Caroline he must be able to take in his daughters' husbands, if he were not to feel too acutely their loss, and as he was now struggling to take Maurice in, for Caroline's sake, and also for his own.
"Daddy, darling, how awful this is about Caroline!" was Beatrix's first word upon that subject.
He had not expected quite such a determined expression of opinion, and hardly knew what to reply for the moment. It gave him a slight sinking of heart, he had no time to ask himself why.
"You haven't told her you think it's awful, have you?" he asked.
"Oh, no, of course not. I've written her a very nice letter. So has Dick. And we've both written to Maurice. It seems funny to have to call him Maurice. If she's got to marry him, Dick says we must treat him as if we were pleased about it. And she told us that you had been simply adorable about it. So we knew that was the line you'd like us to take. But you can't really be pleased, are you, Dad?"
"Why do you think it's so awful?" he asked.
"Oh, Daddy, darling, look at him! Look at him beside a man like Dick."