"They have left a great many friends behind them where they have been living," she said, "and they will make a great many friends here. We shall leave hardly a single friend, after fifteen years, and if we make new ones where we are going to, I'm afraid we shan't keep them. Oh, why can't you think more kindly of people, Albert? We see everybody around us making friends and helping each other, and we are left out of it all. The people we have quarrelled with can't all of them always be in the wrong, and we always in the right."
"Oh, come now, my dear," he said authoritatively. "We have had that all out, and I have admitted to you that I have perhaps been a little too rigid in exacting respect for my office. The fact is, Gertrude, that you are upset at giving up your home of so many years, and I can make excuses for that. Let us begin our new life with cheerful hearts, and leave the past behind us."
"We shall take it all with us," she said, "if you can't learn the Christian charity that you preach about. My heart went out to those two young people. I know that they are good and loving; you can see it in their faces—loving towards each other and full of love towards the people they live amongst. I am sure they will do more with that spirit than we have ever been able to do."
"I can make excuses for you, Gertrude, as I said just now, but in accusing me to my face of a lack of Christian charity, you are saying a very serious thing."
"I know," she said. "And lately I have begun to see that it is a very serious thing. You can't see goodness where it is plain to be seen. I don't believe you will find anywhere a sweeter, truer character than Caroline Grafton's. There isn't a soul in the place who knows her who doesn't almost worship her; but she has offended you in some little way and you can never say a good word for her. And I think the happiness of that young couple ought to make anybody feel better who sees it, but it only makes you gird at them. It has been so often like that. How many times have you come back into this room after seeing people off with a smile on your face, to cover them with contempt and anger? I know we shall never be happy wherever we go, if you can't see how wrong you are; and we shall never have any friends—not to keep them. We shall be lonely all our lives."
She saved him the trouble of replying to this unwonted attack by going out of the room, once more in tears. He walked up and down for some time after she had left, with a frown upon his face, and once he went to the door, and hesitated, as if he would follow her. But he thought better—or worse—of it, and came back into the room and sat himself down at his writing-table after the manner of a man exasperated beyond all bearing.
It was not his wife, however, who had exasperated him, for he was nice to her when they met again later on, and talked pleasantly about the new home they were going to; so that she began to think that she had been rather hard on him.
Caroline found her father alone just before they went up to dress for dinner, and said: "Dad, darling, you've got heaps of money. Couldn't you buy all those things Lord Salisbury wants to leave behind, and make them a present of them? Poor dears, they'll have hardly anything. They have been laughing about it, and I don't think he minds. But of course she would like to have a pretty house. She was brought up in one. She has been telling me about it."
"He's been telling me about it too," said Grafton laughing. "You know, I'm not at all certain, Cara, that we shan't have trouble with that pair of lunatics. Nobody can help liking them, but as a Vicar and Vicaress of a respectable country parish I don't quite see them."
"Oh, I do," she said. "He is just one big loving heart, and he hasn't time to think about all the little things that most of us make such a fuss about. And she has thrown herself into it all because she loves him. But she's just like anybody else, and she'll keep him in order."