They had guessed it, Viola had said in triumph. She had told Gerry it was bound to happen, and he had said he had seen it before she had, upon which had followed a fearsome quarrel. The one thing Gerry would _not_ stand was anybody being cleverer than himself, and unless she was prepared to acknowledge herself a sort of bat-eyed idiot their married life would be wrecked sooner or later.
Neither of them had seen anything at all unsuitable in an engagement between Maurice and Caroline. In fact they had seemed to expect Grafton to be at least as pleased about it as they were themselves. He had not led them to suppose that he was not pleased, but had given them opportunities of showing the opinion they held about Maurice.
They had laid stress on his complete unselfishness. "He'll go out of his way to help anybody," Prescott had said. "And he does it because it's his nature to, not because he thinks he ought to. He thinks about himself less than anybody I've ever known. Caroline will have a splendid husband."
There was the unworldly view. The question of station in life did not interest the Prescotts. Grafton knew that it would interest the people he would see in London considerably.
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.