There was a pause, and then Grafton threw his head back and roared with laughter. "That's in return for the accusation of snobbery, I suppose," he said.
Lady Grafton laughed too. "I can be just as rude as you can," she said, "and I can do it much more subtly. I wish you wouldn't make me laugh, and spoil everything. I'm extremely annoyed with you, and there are a lot more offensive things I should like to say. However, I dare say you'll give me another chance. But seriously, George, this isn't the sort of marriage Caroline ought to make. I've seen the young man, and I've nothing against him in his proper place. But he is hopelessly _gauche_ and middle-class. That's bound to tell by and bye. Women are supposed to have no real discrimination about men, and there's this much truth in it that they can and do fall in love with men who are beneath them, just as men fall in love with women who are beneath them. But when they've been brought up like Caroline they simply can't ally themselves with people not of their own class. Before many years are up she'll be criticising him for his deficiencies. If she does marry him of course her relations aren't going to throw her over for it, but she'll drop out completely. Some men can learn, and raise themselves from the class they were born in, especially if they have clever wives; but I'm sure this young man isn't one of them. He'll keep her down to what he is himself, and really, George, it's a good deal below what Caroline is, or what she ought to be given over to."
"Well, Mary, you've put it sensibly at last. But you're wrong in several particulars, all the same. If it were as simple and obvious as all that I should agree with you; so would Caroline, for that matter, and she wouldn't want to marry him. What you've missed altogether is that the boy has character. I've come to see it already, and he'll grow into something that she can be proud of. Another thing you've missed is that she really doesn't want to live in the usual round. She has kept herself almost entirely out of it for the last eighteen months, because she likes her quiet country life better. She'll have that with him, and she'll get more companionship in the sort of things she likes doing than with a fellow like Francis Parry, for instance."