"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 affiché an intimacy when Margaret should have left Chayleigh.
In all this there was not a particle of regard for Lady Davyntry, of liking for her society, of a wish that the supposed intimacy should become real. It would be quite enough for her that the Croftons and the Crokers, the Willises, the Wyngroves, and the Savilles should know that Lady Davyntry was on the most familiar terms with the Carterets, and quite beyond those to which any other family in the neighbourhood could lay claim.