Mr. Carteret's mind was at peace, because his mind had never been in any other condition since Godfrey Hungerford's death had restored it to ordinary equilibrium, and because his collections were getting on splendidly.
When Margaret Hungerford had been five months at Chayleigh--when the time was approaching which she had fixed upon as the period at which she would commence her career of labour and independence--when eleven months had elapsed since Godfrey Hungerford's death--when the snows of February lay thick and white upon the earth--an event occurred which disturbed the calm of Chayleigh.
Mrs. Carteret distinguished herself in a most unexpected manner. She caught cold returning from one of the dull dinner-parties which her soul loved, and which no inclemency of weather, or domestic crisis which could be ignored with any decency, would have induced her to forego. A second dinner-party was to come off within three days; so Mrs. Carteret denied the existence of the cold, and attended that solemn festival. That day week she was dead.
[CHAPTER XII.]
DAWNING.
"You cannot conceive anything more perfect than the way Margaret is behaving," wrote Lady Davyntry to her brother, when the first novelty and shock of Mrs. Carteret's death had somewhat subsided, "in this sad affair. Her conduct to her father is most admirable. He, poor man, is in a wretched state--more, perhaps, of bewilderment than grief, but altogether unhinged.
"Master's put out terrible," was the account I had from one of the Chayleigh servants, and, odd and horrid as it sounds, I really think that is the best description of poor Mr. Carteret's state of mind. Anything he is not used to "puts him out," and he is singularly little used to trouble or emotion of any kind.
"He wanders about in a way distressing to behold, and cannot be induced to occupy himself. 'There ain't no keeping him in the study,' Foster said to me; 'and as much as stick a pin in a butterfly, Mr. James nor Miss Margaret can't indoose him to do.'
"He seems to have lost all his taste for his specimens, but Margaret has hit upon a great idea for his relief and amusement. This is no other than to talk to her father about the interest which the poor woman who is gone took in his pursuits, and how much she would have regretted his abandonment of them.
"There is a touch of pious fraud in this, for no one can possibly know better than Margaret that Mrs. Carteret never took any interest in anything but herself, and was rather more indifferent to her husband's pursuits than to any other matters; but the fraud is pious and successful.