"You will grant my sister's prayer," he said. "I know what is in the note. She really has a cold, Mrs. Hungerford. It will be a charity if you will go to her.--What do you say, sir?"
Mr. Carteret said nothing, for the ample reason that he had not the remotest idea of what Mr. Baldwin was talking about. When, however, that gentleman explained the matter, he gave it as his decided opinion that Margaret ought to go for Lady Davyntry's sake and her own. A little change would do her good. She must not mope, the kind gentleman said; and he and Sibylla were but dull company now. She must find it dismal enough now that James was away. By the bye, did Margaret know how Mr. Fordham was? Had James found him any better than he expected when he arrived at Oxford? Yes, yes, Margery must go--she moped too much; she did not even care for the specimens so much as she used to do.
"Indeed I do, papa," said Margaret, rising suddenly from her seat and laying her hand on her father's shoulder; "I care for them a great deal more--for everything that interests you, and that you care for."
Her luminous eyes were softer and brighter than Mr. Baldwin had ever seen them. She had evidently been thinking of something in the past with which her father's words had chimed in. He was waiting her decision with a strange feeling of suspense and anxiety, considering that the matter involved was of no greater moment than the question whether his sister's friend, who had seen her yesterday, and would in all probability see her to-morrow, should make up her mind to refrain from the luxury of seeing her to-day.
"Do you, my dear?" said Mr. Carteret. "That's right; you will go, of course, then, and Foster shall fetch you this evening.--No, indeed, Mr. Baldwin, I could not think of your taking the trouble."
But Mr. Baldwin insisted, subject to Mrs. Hungerford's permission, that he would see her home. This permission she carelessly gave, and then left the room to prepare for her walk. The two men stood silent for a minute; then Mr. Carteret said, with a deep sigh,
"Poor Margery! she has had plenty of trouble in her time. I often wonder whether she is going to have peace now. We can't give that to our sons and daughters, Baldwin, or get it from them either."
There was a sad desponding tone in Mr. Carteret's voice. Now he was beginning to understand something of the meaning and extent of the sorrow that had befallen his daughter--now, when the indelible stamp of its effect was set upon her changed face, upon her shrinking figure, upon her slow and unelastic movements.
She had had time now to feel the repose, the comfort, the respectability of the home to which she had come back, and yet there was no change in her beyond the release from mere bodily fatigue. The wan weariness which he had not seen at first, but had seen when James Dugdale directed his attention to it, was there still, unaltered; indeed, to the eye of a keen observer, it was deepened. In some cases, mere respite from physical labour does not produce the effect of mental repose. Margaret's case was one of those.
Mr. Baldwin did not reply to Mr. Carteret's observation; he walked towards the window, and looked dreamily out, as Margaret had done. Presently she came back, wearing her sombre mantle and the close widow's bonnet of a period when grand deuil, in the Mary-Stuart fashion, was unknown.