"I like him as much as ever," she said, "for what he is."
"For what he is!" he echoed.
"What he is isn't what I want now," she said, not without hesitation. "It would be different if I were in love with him, as I suppose he is with me,—poor Francis! If I felt like that I should not mind what I did or where I went with him."
"My dear child, you talk as if he'd take you out to the wilds. You'd live where you liked, within reach of London. He has to stick to it closer than I do, at present. You couldn't live right away, like this. But—"
"Oh, it wouldn't be the same," she said. "But it isn't that, Dad. I don't love him. I thought I might, perhaps, last year, enough to live whatever life he liked with him. But now I know I never can. He isn't what I want."
"What do you want?" he asked, throwing a glance at her.
"Only you, darling," she said lightly. "Don't worry me about Francis. I'm worried about him a little myself, because I do like him, and we're friends. But he'll get over it, and find somebody else. I'm heart-free, Dad. Really I am. I love you and B, and Barbara and Bunting, and the Dragon, and every single soul who lives at Abington, except Lord Salisbury; and he's going soon. When I begin to love somebody else I'll let you know. I don't suppose you'll have me on your hands all your life, but you'll have me for a good long time to come. Let's have a canter."
He was pleased enough. If she had wanted to marry Francis Parry he would have resigned her, and felt that it was the right thing. But he didn't want that, or any other marriage for her, yet. He only wanted to be sure that he was not keeping her selfishly; and her words, and more than her words, her tone, relieved him of any doubt on that subject. And her love for Abington, and her wish to make his home for him there suited him. She was more his at Abington than she could be in London.
But he made up his mind that the succession of guests should not fail at Abington. She must not live out of the world, as he and his like estimated the world, at her age. He did not want her to become like the three loud good-natured horsey Pemberton girls, who in spite of their parentage and their wide relationships would always be country cousins, wherever they went. Country cousins who came from such a house as Grays were well enough in their way, but it was not the way of the world that Caroline belonged to, the world that she was so fitted to adorn, and they were not.
They had cantered across a high-lying common, and descended into a country lane along which they walked their horses, ready for conversation again. The hedges on either side of them were pink and white with May; the golden carpet of early June was spread all over the meadows; the trees wore their dress of freshest green; larks sang in high ecstasy overhead. Grafton felt the delight of the unused untroubled country, but though it was a rest and a refreshment to him, his life was bound up with other things that took him away from it, even while he was enjoying it. Stealing a glance at his girl's much-loved face, he caught something of what it was to her to soak herself in all the happiness of nature, to wake and sleep with it, and to cast off from her the fitful life of sought-out amusements. She had flowered under it. Much as he adored his little Beatrix, and sweet and kind as she was, it came to him that Caroline's was the finer character of the two. Beatrix loved Abington too, and the quieter life they led there; but she loved it as he did, as a change and a refreshment. She would never have been content to settle down to it as Caroline had, for she had not the same resources in herself.