"Idleness!" said Mr. Baldwin, "what idleness? There is just the same kind of life to be had at Chayleigh, I suppose, as women, as ladies, lead everywhere else--the kind of life Margaret was born to. I can't see the matter in that light."
"I daresay not, Fitz," said Lady Davyntry, rather proud of the chance of offering a suggestion to this infallible and incomparable younger brother of hers. "But I can. Margaret certainly was, as you say, born to lead the kind of life which all women of her position get through somehow; but then she was taken out of it very young, and, whatever it was she did or suffered, you may be sure that it gave her mind a turn not to be undone. Of course, I don't mean to say she wants to go back to that again, whatever it was; but I am sure she must have some settled occupation to be happy. I do not think, when one's heart has been once crammed quite full of anything, be it joyful or sorrowful, one can stand a vacuum." From which speech it will be made plain that Lady Davyntry did not cultivate her emotions at the expense of her good sense.
"You are right, Nelly; I see you are quite right. But what does her father say?"
"That I really cannot tell you; but I suppose what Mr. Carteret usually says, in any matter unconnected with birds, beasts, fishes, or insects--nothing. He and Margaret have a tacit understanding that Mrs. Carteret and she are not exactly sympathetic, and he has a feeble desire that his daughter should be happy. Beyond that he really thinks nothing, and would have as much notion of the new life she wants to enter upon, as of the old life she has escaped from."
"What does Dugdale think?"
"That I cannot tell you. Margaret never said a word about his opinion in connection with the matter. I don't think she likes him."
"No," said Mr. Baldwin, "I don't think she does."
"I asked her to come to me," Lady Davyntry continued, "and tried very hard to persuade her that I required the services of a dame de compagnie. But she laughed at me, and would not listen to me for a moment, though she told me she had once suggested to Mr. Dugdale that she should ask me to take her, for the commendable purpose of spiting Mrs. Carteret. 'Do you think I want to play at independence?' she said. 'If you do, you are much mistaken. I won't have any more shams, please God, in my life. No, I am going to work in earnest.' So I could not say any more. She may change her mind in six months, though I do not think she will."
Mr. Fitzwilliam Meriton Baldwin left his sister to entertain a selection of the Croftons and the Crokers and the Willises, and betook himself to a solitary ramble. The question which he had asked himself when he had seen Margaret Hungerford but once had recurred to him very often since then. Now he asked himself if he might dare to hope that he had found the answer.
He did not deny to himself now that he loved Margaret Hungerford. He was quite clear on that point; and he knew, too, that it was with an immortal and a worthy love. What did she mean? Was she to mean to him happiness--the realisation of a man's best and wisest dreams? Was she to mean this to him in time, or did that sombre past in her life, of which he knew nothing, interpose an impassable barrier between her and him? He thought of Margaret's frank unembarrassed manner towards him without discouragement; he never fancied she could feel anything for him yet; he perfectly comprehended that nothing was so utterly dead for her as love.