"Poor darling!" he said tenderly. "You know how I hated it at the time. But when she was getting over it I sometimes almost wished that he had come back. I'm precious glad he didn't, though."
"So am I now," said Caroline. "But it did leave a mark upon her. Should you mind, Dad, if she did want to marry Dick?"
"Mind? No. Why should I mind?" he asked. "It's just the sort of marriage I should like for her. I suppose they'd be away a lot at first, but the old man is over eighty. It can't be very long before Dick succeeds. Then they'd be living at Wilborough. There's nothing I should like better."
She was a little surprised at this. It had not been only his objection to the man whom Beatrix had wanted to marry that had so upset him nearly a year before.
He answered the thought in her mind. "I know B has got to marry," he said. "She's cut out for it. She was so young last year, and it came as a shock to me that she was already of a marriageable age. I couldn't get used to it—that she wasn't mine any more."
"Do you feel like that about it, Dad?"
"I don't now. I've got used to the idea."
"Of course we shall always be yours, whoever we marry."
"Not as you have been, darling. That's impossible. It was old Lady Mansergh who told me that fathers hated their daughters marrying because they had always been first with them, and couldn't be first any longer. That's true, I suppose, if they marry somebody you can't take in. It would certainly have been true of me if Beatrix had married that fellow." He never spoke of Lassigny by name. "But with a man you like and respect it's different. You don't lose everything, even if you can't be first any longer. If he's the right sort of man you gain. I believe your grandfather felt that about me. He loved your mother, and she was very young when we married. He didn't like giving her up, but he was so nice about it that I took particular pains to show him what a lot I thought of him. He was a fine old boy. I wish you'd known him longer, Cara. I believe, when he got used to it, that he was as fond of me as he was of any of his sons. Your mother used to write to him every week, and I used to write to him too. He told me before he died that it had made all the difference to him, the first year of our marriage. She was his only daughter, you see, and that was the time he felt it most."
"Should you have felt like that about Francis, if I had wanted to marry him, Dad?"