Shortly after the incidents narrated in the preceding chapter, Mr. Baldwin left Davyntry. His sister maintained to the last the strong constraint she had put upon herself. She had seen with a genuine disinterested pleasure, for which the world in general might fairly have been excused for not giving her credit, that her young favourite had captivated her only brother.  
Without being a very wise, a very witty, or in any marked way a very superior woman, Eleanor Davyntry possessed certain admirable and estimable qualities. Not the least remarkable, and perhaps the most rare of these, was disinterestedness. This virtue was in her: it did not arise from circumstances. She was not disinterested because she was rich,--the amount of wealth in people's possession makes no difference in their appreciation of and desire for wealth,--and Lady Davyntry "had no nonsense about her."
 
She thoroughly understood the value of her money as a means towards the enjoyment of the happiness which she acknowledged to be hers; but it never occurred to her for a moment to consider her own interests in the question of her brother's future. That he would probably marry at some time she looked upon as certain; and the inheritance of the Deane from one so much younger than herself would not have been a hopeful subject of speculation, had she been a person who would have speculated upon it at all. Even if she had had children, it would have been all the same to Lady Davyntry. She would not have been covetous for them any more than for herself. She had thought rather nervously, since Sir Richard's death had left her more dependent on her brother for the love and companionship without which life would have been intolerable to a woman of her disposition, of the probabilities of Mr. Baldwin's marriage.
 
Lady Davyntry had her prejudices; one of them was against Scotchwomen. She hoped he would not marry a Scotchwoman, therefore she had never encouraged her brother's residence at the Deane.
 
"It is not so much their ankles and wrists," she had assured Sir Richard, when he had remonstrated with her for "snubbing" a florid young lady who hailed from Aberdeen; and did it in a voice which set Lady Davyntry's teeth on edge, and made her backbone quiver, "as it is their minds and their ways. Of course, the way they speak is very awful, and the way they move is worse; but I could stand all that, I daresay. But what I cannot stand is their coarse way of looking at things, and the hardness of them in general. And as for flirting! You may think it is not dangerous, because it is all romping and hoydenism; but I don't want a sister-in-law of Miss MacAlpine's pattern, and so I tell you."
 
"Hadn't you better tell Baldwin so, my dear Nelly," the reasonable baronet had made answer. "I don't want a MacAlpine importation into the family either; but, after all, it's his business, not mine."
 
"No, no," said the astute Nelly; "I am not quite so stupid as to warn any man against a particular woman of whom he has hitherto taken no special notice. That would be just the way to make him notice her, and that would be playing her game for her. I am not really afraid of the fair Jessie; Fitzwilliam can see her wrists, and her ankles too, quite as plainly as I can; and I fancy he suffers rather more acutely from her accent. I shall limit my interference to getting him away from the Deane."
 
Other and sadder preoccupations soon after claimed Lady Davyntry, and Miss Jessie MacAlpine was forgotten. And now, when her brother spoke of leaving her to return to the Deane, she remembered the young woman and her mosstrooper-like accomplishments without a shade of apprehension.
 
"My darling Margaret has made my mind quite easy on that point, at all events," thought Eleanor, as Mr. Baldwin imparted to her some of his intentions for the benefit of his tenantry and estate. "Whether she cares for him or not, whether good or evil is to be the result,--and I believe all will go well with them both,--he is safe in such an attachment."
 
When her brother had left her, Eleanor thought long and happily over it all. Of his feelings she did not entertain a doubt, and her keen feminine perception had begun to discern in Margaret certain symptoms which led her to hope that for her too the dawn of a fair day was at hand. If she had known more of the young widow's inner life, if she had had a clearer knowledge of her past. Lady Davyntry would have hoped less and feared more. But her ignorance prevented the discouragement of fear, and her natural enthusiasm aided the impulses of hope; and she saw visions and dreamed dreams which were pure and beautiful, for they were all of the happiness and the good of others.
 
Thus Margaret's sadness and silence, the gloom which sometimes settled heavily over her, did not grieve her watchful friend. If only she loved, or should come to love, Fitzwilliam Baldwin, all this should be changed. All the darkness should pass away, and a life adorned with all that wealth could lend, enriched with all that love could give, should open before the woman whose feet had hitherto trodden such weary ways. Lady Davyntry pleased herself with fancies of all she should do to increase the happiness of that splendid visionary household at the Deane.
 
If Lady Davyntry could have known what were Margaret's thoughts just at the time when Mr. Baldwin went away, she would have felt some discouragement, though not so much as a person less given to enthusiasm, and to the raising of a fancy to the rank and importance of a hobby. She had never realised any of the painful features of Mrs. Hungerford's past life; she had never tried to realise them. Her mind was not of an order to which the realisation of circumstances entirely out of the sphere of her experience was possible, and she never speculated upon them.
 
In a different way, and for quite another class of reason, Lady Davyntry had arrived at a state of mind similar to that of Mr. Carteret, who regarded the blissful feet of his son-in-law's death as not only the termination, but the consignment to oblivion, of all the misery his existence had occasioned.
 
"Of course she is low at times," thought Lady Davyntry; "that is only natural. After all, she must feel herself out of her place at Chayleigh, with that detestable woman. But that will not last; and she will be all the brighter and the happier when Fitz has her safely at home."
 
The world would have found it hard to understand that Mr. Baldwin's only sister--the great, rich, enviable, to-be-captured-if-possible Mr. Baldwin's sister--should desire so ardently the marriage of her brother with a person who had no fortune, no claim to personal distinction, and--a story. Horrible dowry for a woman! Better any insignificance, however utter.
 
And Margaret? While Mr. Baldwin was attending to the long-neglected demands, undergoing active persecution at the hands of a neighbourhood resolved on intimacy, and longing, with all the strength of his heart, for the sight of Margaret's pale face and the sound of her thrilling voice--while his sister was building castles in the air for him to tenant--what of Margaret? What of her who was the centre, so unconsciously to herself, of all these hopes and speculations?
 
She was perhaps farther just then than she had ever been from a mood which was likely to dispose her towards their realisation. She had been disturbed rather than affected by the perusal of Hayes Meredith's letter. It had immediately succeeded to the outburst of emotion to which she had yielded in the presence of Mr. Baldwin, and for which she had afterwards taken herself severely to task; and it had upset her hard-won equanimity.
 
She was ashamed of herself, angry with herself, when she found out how much she desired that the past should be utterly forgotten. She had had to bear it all, and she had borne it, not so badly on the whole; but she did not want any reference to it; she shrunk from any external association with it as from a physical pain. Her reluctance to encounter any such association had strangely increased within the past few weeks.
 
She did not know, she did not ask herself, why. Was she ungrateful because she had felt intense reluctance to read Hayes Meredith's letter? Had she forgotten, had she ceased to thank him for all he had done to lighten her lot? Was she so cold, so "shallow-hearted," as to think, as many a vulgar-minded woman would have thought, that her account with the man who had succoured her in a strange land was closed with the cheque which her father had given her to be sent to him, in payment of the money he had lent her?
 
No, Margaret Hungerford was not ungrateful; but there was a sore spot in her heart which something--she did not ask what--was daily making sorer; the letter had touched it, and she shrunk with keen unexplained anguish from the touch. She lay awake the whole night after she had read the letter from Melbourne, and it seemed to her that she lived all the old agonies of despair, rage, humiliation, and disgust over again.
 
It chanced that the next day James Dugdale was ill. This was so common an occurrence that no one thought much about it. James was familiar with suffering, and it was the inevitable penalty of fatigue. Not for him was the healthy sense of being tired, and of refreshing rest. Fatigue came to him with pain and fever, with racked limbs, and irritable nerves, and terrible depression. His journey had tired him, and he lay all day on the couch placed in the window of his room.
 
Hither came Mrs. Carteret frequently, fussily, but genuinely kind, and Mr. Baldwin, to say some friendly words, and feel the truest compassion for the strong man thus imprisoned in his weak frame. Hither, later in the day, and much to the surprise of James Dugdale, came Margaret. He had thought she had gone to Davyntry, and said so. She reddened, a little angrily, as she replied,
 
"No: I have not been out. You seem to think I must always go to Davyntry."
 
"Not I, indeed, Margaret," said James, with a smile; "but I think they do. Since I have been away, I understand you have been constantly at Davyntry, and I am very glad to hear it; it is good for you and for Lady Davyntry also."
 
"Perhaps so; she is very kind," said Margaret absently. "At all events, I am not there to-day, as you see, and I am not going there, or anywhere, but I will sit here with you, if I may."
 
She turned on him one of her rare, winning smiles--a smile far more beautiful, he thought, than any her girlhood had been decked in. She drew a low chair into the bow of the window, beside his couch, and sat down. Between him and the light was her graceful figure, and her clear pale face, with its strangely-contrasted look of youth and experience.
 
"Are you really going to give up all the afternoon to me?" said James, in delight.
 
"I really am. I will read to you, or we can talk, just as you like. I suppose you don't feel any great fancy for turning tutor to me over again, though I see all my old school-books religiously preserved on your book-shelves," she said, glancing round at the well-stocked walls of the room, which had been the schoolroom in the days when Haldane and she had been James's pupils.
 
"I have kept every remembrance of that time, Margaret," said James.
 
There was a tone in his voice which might have been a revelation to her, had she heard it, but she did not. She smiled again, and said:
 
"You had a troublesome pupil. I am in a good mood to-day, as I used to say long ago, and I want to talk to you about this."
 
She took Hayes Meredith's letter out of her pocket as she spoke.
 
James Dugdale kept silence, looking at her. "Is she going to tell me the story of her life?" he thought. "Am I going at last to learn something of the history of this woman whom I love?"
 
Margaret did not speak for some moments; she looked at the letter in silence. Then she unfolded it, and said:
 
"I am glad you let me read this letter for myself, James" (she had dropped into the habit of calling him by his name); "there are some hard things in it, but they are true--and so, better spoken, no matter how hard they may be. But let us pass them over, they are said of the dead."
 
Her face hardened, and she turned it away from him. James Dugdale laid hi............