A month had elapsed since Margaret Hungerford's return to her father's house, and had brought with it certain changes in the situation of things at Chayleigh, which, though they could not have been understood by outsiders, were very keenly appreciated by the actors in the small domestic drama there.  
It had brought to Margaret more calm and peace. It had not changed her intention of leaving Chayleigh, of seeking some independent means of providing for herself; but it had decreased her anxiety to put this intention into immediate, or even into very early, execution. The main element in this alteration was her perception of her father's pleasure in her society.
 
"It is not much to bear for his sake," she said to herself, "to put up with Mrs. Carteret. I have had worse things than that to endure without the power or the prospect of escaping from them either, and I will stay for six months with papa. James Dugdale thinks it the right thing, and, if Mrs. Carteret is convinced that it is to be only for six months, she will see that her best policy, in pursuit of her favourite plan of making things pleasant for papa, in order to have her own way thoroughly in things she really cares about, is by behaving properly to me. I will take care she shall labour under no delusive fears about my having come to take up my abode here; and then I am much out of my calculations, and egregiously mistaken in my amiable stepmother, if she does not change her tactics altogether."
 
The result justified Margaret's calculations. She took an early opportunity of informing Mrs. Carteret that she did not contemplate a long stay at Chayleigh.
 
The intimation was received by her stepmother with much propriety of manner, but without the slightest warmth. She designed to let Margaret perceive that while she (Mrs. Carteret) was too ladylike, too perfectly trained and finished in the polished proprieties of life to fail in the fulfilment of the exact laws of hospitality, it had never occurred to her to consider Margaret in any other light than that of a guest; and that she therefore regarded the communication as merely relating to the duration of her visit.
 
Margaret clearly perceived her meaning, but she did not resent it, nor did it grieve her. The peace of a settled resolution had come to her. Mrs. Carteret condescended to express her approbation of Margaret's determination, and her readiness to assist her in carrying it into effect.
 
"Nothing is more admirable in young people than an independent spirit," said the approving lady; "and, notwithstanding your unfortunate marriage, Margaret, I consider you as a young person still. You are quite right in considering it unjust that your father should be expected to provide for you twice over--first, in handing over the money you were not really entitled to, to that unpleasant person, Mr. Hungerford, and a second time, by having you to live here."
 
"My father is not expected, either by me or by any one that I know of, to do anything of the kind," interrupted Margaret, with a slight quivering of the lips and a transient accession of colour to the pale cheeks.
 
"That is just what I am saying, my dear. I highly commend your very proper view. It would be quite my own. Indeed, I am sure, were I in your position, I could not endure dependence, even if my father were a much richer man than yours is. I cannot understand any one not doing anything to secure independence."
 
Margaret smiled, rather a hard kind of smile, as she thought there was one thing she certainly would not do to attain independence, and that one thing was precisely what Miss Martley had done in becoming Mrs. Carteret.
 
The elder lady continued to talk for some time longer in the same strain, and at length she asked Margaret how she intended to procure occupation.
 
"I have not thought about that part of it yet," she replied.
 
Then Mrs. Carteret allowed the truth to slip out; then she betrayed her real consciousness of the meanness she was perpetrating. She shifted her eyes uneasily away from Margaret's face, as she said,
 
"I should not mention the matter to any one about here if I were you, Margaret. People talk so oddly, and your father might not like it. I always think, when anything of the kind is to be done, it had better be away from home, and among a different connection."
 
Margaret answered her with hardly-disguised contempt:
 
"Your warning comes rather late. I have already told Lady Davyntry of my intention, which she approves as much as you do. She has been good enough to promise me her friendship and interest in settling matters to my satisfaction. As for papa, he will not mind how I do it, when I can succeed in reconciling him to my doing it at all."
 
Mrs. Carteret felt strongly tempted to get into a violent rage, and relieve her vexation, which was intense, by saying anything and everything which anger might suggest to her, to Margaret.
 
That Lady Davyntry, who had taken no notice of the advances she had made towards an intimacy which would have been a social triumph to Mrs. Carteret--Lady Davyntry who, since Margaret's return, had gone so near ignoring her stepmother's existence as was consistent with the observance of the commonest civility--that she should be admitted behind the scenes, that Margaret should instruct her in the dessous des cartes, was gall and wormwood to her. She had never been very far off hating Margaret hitherto; her quiet stealthy dislike to the girl now deepened into the darker feeling; and though she merely replied, "O, then, in that case, it cannot be helped," Margaret knew that that minute marked an era in Mrs. Carteret's feelings towards her.
 
"Never mind," she said to herself, as though she had been encouraging another person; "never mind, it is only for six months. She will always be civil to me, and it can't last."
 
She was right; Mrs. Carteret always was civil to her. She was a woman in whom cunning and caution were at least as strong as temper, and she took counsel of both in this instance. She was by no means free from an uneasy suspicion that, if Margaret had formed a contrary determination, her influence with her father would have outweighed that which she herself could have exerted.
 
It behoved her, therefore, to be thankful that the occasion for testing that unpleasantly-important point had not arisen, and to confine her tactics to such consistently-ceremonious treatment of Margaret as should keep her position as only a guest constantly before her eyes, and maintain her resolution by the aid of her pride; while all should be so contrived as to avoid attracting the attention of her absent-minded husband.
 
Mrs. Carteret conquered her temper, therefore--an operation in which she found the counting of the stitches of her everlasting fancy-work afforded her a good deal of assistance--and, after a short pause, took up a collateral branch of the same subject.
 
Margaret had dismissed Rose Moore, and the girl had gone on her journey with a weight at her heart which she would have hardly believed possible, seeing that she was going home. But she had come to love Margaret very much, and she was very imperfectly consoled for parting with her by the distant hope which the young widow held out of a future meeting.
 
"You will be married, and away in a house of your own, my dear girl, very soon, and you will not care much about anything else then; but I promise you, if ever I want you very much, Rose, I will send for you. I don't think I ever can want you, in all my life, as much as I wanted you when you came to me; and of course you never can want me; your life is laid out for you too securely for that."
 
"None of us can tell that," said Rose Moore; "who knows?"
 
"Well, of course no one knows," said Margaret; "but it looks like it. However, we shall never forget one another, Rose, and if either can help the other, the one who can will." And with this understanding they parted.
 
Mrs. Carteret had never taken any notice of Rose Moore, who, in her turn, had held the lady of the house in slight reverence. Mrs. Carteret had a constitutional aversion to the Irish. She considered them half-civilised beings, with a natural turn for murder, a natural unfitness for domestic service, and an objectionable predilection for attending the ceremonial observances of their religion.
 
As an Irishwoman, then. Rose Moore was antipathetic to her; and as a devoted though humble friend of her stepdaughter's, she was something more. The Irish girl's bright-hearted love and sympathy for the young widow was positively repulsive to Mrs. Carteret, because there was a reproach in it.
 
But when Rose was actually gone, Mrs. Carteret found herself in a difficulty. She disliked the idea of a successor to Rose being found, because her narrow, grasping nature was of the small tyrant order, and she could not endure that in her house there should be any one who did not owe allegiance to her.
 
Another reason was to be found in Mrs. Carteret's parsimony. She was as avaricious as she was despotic, and both these passions were stirred within her when she asked Margaret, in the most distant and uninterested tone which even she could assume, whether she had yet made any arrangements about replacing Rose Moore. "Moore," she called her, after the English fashion, which had been a deadly offence to Rose.
 
"Calling you as if you were either a man or a dog," the indignant damsel had said.
 
"It's the English fashion, Rose," Margaret had pleaded in mitigation.
 
"Then it's like more of their fashions, and they ought to be ashamed of it, and would if they were Christians. However, I suppose English servants put up with that, or anythin' else, for their four meals a-day, and snacks into the bargain, and their beer, and the liberty their clargy gives them to backbite their masters and mistresses."
 
Margaret tried to explain that neither in this nor in any other particular were the objects of Rose's indignant scorn in the habit of applying to their "clargy:" but this was an enormity which she found the girl's mind was quite incapable of receiving as a truth.
 
Mrs. Hungerford replied to Mrs. Carteret's question, that she had no intention of providing a successor for Rose Moore.
 
"I should have thought it quite unnecessary to tell you so," she said, rather angrily. "You can hardly suppose I am in a position to keep a maid. Even if I were for the present, to accustom myself to any luxury which I must lose at the end of six months would be unpardonable folly and weakness."
 
"You are quite right, my dear," said Mrs. Carteret, with a cordial tone in her voice, and a side-glance in her eye of intense dislike of the speaker. "I admire your correct and self-denying principle, but I am not sure that your father will like it. While you stay with us, I am sure he would not wish you to be without a maid."
 
Margaret did not take much trouble to conceal the contempt which animated the smile that she permitted to pass slowly over her face as she replied:
 
"Pray do not trouble yourself about that, Mrs. Carteret. If papa thinks about it at all, which is very unlikely, he will know how little personal attendance I have been accustomed to. But you and I know the fact of there being a servant more or less in the house will never present itself to his notice. Pray make your mind easy on that point."
 
"But there's--" said Mrs. Carteret hesitatingly--"there's James, you know; he is sure to know that Moore has left you, and to find out whether you have got any one to replace her."
 
"Make your mind easy about that, too, Mrs. Carteret," said Margaret; and the confidence in her tone was particularly displeasing. "I will take care that Mr. Dugdale understands my wishes in this matter."
 
So Mrs. Carteret carried three points. She avoided having a servant in the house who should not be her servant; she escaped an additional expense; and she was exempted, by Margaret's express disclaimer, from offering her the services of her own maid--an offer which, had she found herself obliged to make it, Mrs. Collins would probably have declined to carry into execution. There was one person in the world of whom Mrs. Carteret was afraid, and that individual was Mrs. Collins.
 
When the conversation between Margaret and Mrs. Carteret had come to an end, to their mutual relief, Margaret went to her father. As she approached the study, she heard voices, and knew she should not find him alone.
 
"I suppose it is James," she thought, and entered the room. But it was not James; it was Mr. Baldwin, who held a large old-looking volume in his hand, and was discussing with Mr. Carteret a passage concerning the structure of crustacea. He closed the book, and replaced it on the table with great alacrity, as Margaret came in and spoke to him. Then she turned to her father. "I was going to talk to you for a little while, papa; but as Mr. Baldwin is here--"
 
"Never mind that, Margery," said her father; "Mr. Baldwin was just going to the drawing-room to see Sibylla and you. He has a message for you from Lady Davyntry."
 
Mr. Baldwin confirmed Mr. Carteret's statement, and took from his waistcoat-pocket a tiny note, folded three-cornerwise. This was before the invention of square envelopes and dazzling monograms; and female friendship, confidences, and general gushingness usually expressed themselves in the three-cornered form.
 
Margaret took the note, and, passing before the "specimen"-laden table, went to the window and seated herself on the low, wide, uncushioned ledge. She held the twisted paper in her hand, and looked idly out of the window, before she broke the seal, unconscious that Mr. Baldwin was looking at her with an eager interest which rendered him singularly inattentive to the arguments addressed to him by Mr. Carteret in pursuance of the discussion which Margaret's entrance had interrupted.
 
The girlish gracefulness of her attitude contrasted strangely with her sombre heavy dress; the soft youthfulness of her colourless face made the harsh lines of the close crimped cap an odious anachronism.
 
 
"MY DARLING MARGARET,"--this was the note,--"I have such a cold, I cannot get to you. Do be charitable, and come to me. My brother will escort you, and will see you home at night, unless you will stay.
 
"Always your devoted
 
"ELEANOR."
 
 
The renewed acquaintance with Lady Davyntry was at this time an event of a fortnight old, and the irrepressible Eleanor had to a certain extent succeeded in thawing the frozen exterior of the young woman's demeanour. Kindness, if even it were a little silly and over-demonstrative, was a refreshing novelty to Margaret, and she welcomed it.
 
At first she had been a little hard, a little incredulous towards Lady Davyntry; she had been inclined to treat her rapidly-developed fondness for herself as a caprice de grande dame. But she soon abandoned that harsh interpretation; she soon understood that, though it was exaggerated in its expression, the affection with which she had inspired Lady Davyntry was perfectly sincere. Hence it came that Margaret had told her friend what were her views for her future; but she had not raised the veil which hid the past. Of that dreadful time, with its horrid experience of sin and misery, with its contaminating companionship, and the stain which it had left of such knowledge of evil and all the meanness of vice as never should be brought within the ken of pure womanhood at any age, Margaret never spoke, and Lady Davyntry, though inquisitive enough in general, and by no means wanting in curiosity in this particular instance, did not seek to overcome her reticence.
 
She had considerable delicacy of mind, and, in Margaret's case, affection and interest brought her not-naturally-bright intelligence to its aid. She had noticed and understood the changeableness of Margaret's moods. She had seen her, when animated and seemingly happy in conversation with her or Mr. Baldwin (what a treat it was to hear those two talk! she thought), suddenly lapse into silence, and all the colour would die out of her cheeks, and all the light from her eyes--struck away from them doubtless by the stirring of some painful memory, aroused from its superficial slumber by some word or phrase in which the pang of association lurked.
 
She had seen the expression of weariness which Margaret's figure had worn at first come over it again, and then the drooped head and the listless hands had a story in them, from even trying to guess at which the kind-hearted woman, whose one grief had no touch of shame or dread or degrading remembrance in it, shrunk with true delicacy and keen womanly sympathy.
 
Lady Davyntry had been a daily visitor at Chayleigh since Margaret's return. She treated Mrs. Carteret with civility; but she made it, as she intended, evident that the attraction was Margaret, and Mrs. Carteret had to endure the mortifying conviction as best she could. Her best was not very good, and she never allowed an opportunity to pass of hitting Margaret's friend as hard as her feeble powers of sarcasm, which only attained the rank of spite, enabled her to hit her. Lady Davyntry was totally unconscious, and Margaret was profoundly indifferent.
 
It happened, however, on this particular day, after the conclusion of Mrs. Carteret's conversation with her stepdaughter, and while she was superintending the interesting operation, performed by Collins, of altering the trimmings of a particularly becoming dress, that she came to a determination to alter her tactics. She had not to dread a permanent invasion of her territory, a permanent usurpation of her place by Margaret; she would therefore profit by the temporary evil, and so entangle Lady Davyntry in civilities that it would be impossible for her to withdraw from so a............