She would, priding herself on her astuteness and believing herself inscrutably clever in the performance, send him pages of gossiping details about other people than the dwellers at Chayleigh; she would tell him about the Croftons, the Crokers, and the Willises, about friends in town and friends in foreign parts, whenever it appeared to her that her insistence upon Chayleigh was becoming too marked.
By such artful dodges did she seek to divert Mr. Baldwin's suspicions that she cherished the profound design of marrying him to her friend.
Her brother, on his part, carefully forbore to point out the inconsistency between her dislike of letter-writing and the frequency of her correspondence. He understood the guileless and amiable Eleanor thoroughly, and smiled over her letters as he thought how charmingly transparent the artifice was, and how easily he could have disposed of it all, had it not precisely coincided with his own wishes.
Time hung heavily on Mr. Baldwin's hands in the midst of his great possessions, and in the presence of his popularity with an assiduous neighbourhood. He had set his heart, he was ready to stake his whole future, upon winning the wearied heart of the pale-faced girl who had brought something into his life which had never been there before, and the hours and days lingered until the time should come which he had set before himself as fitting for the attempt.
Her first year of widowhood would soon have elapsed, and then he might, without offence, tell her that he loved her. So he named that time, in his own mind, for his return to Davyntry.
When Mrs. Carteret's death occurred, Mr. Baldwin did not alter his plan. The change in Margaret's prospects, the necessity for her remaining with her father, the fact that her sphere of duty was strictly defined now, gave him no uneasiness.
He would never ask her to leave her father. He knew Mr. Carteret well. It did not take much time or pains to acquire that knowledge, and he knew he had no strong attachment to Chayleigh. If he could but persuade Margaret to come and reign at the Deane, he had no doubt her father would readily go there too.
He had a conviction, which, after all, was not presumptuous for a man of his fortune and station to entertain, that in Margaret's brother he should find a friend. James Dugdale had told him a little of the family history--had given him a vague notion of the part Haldane had taken in the circumstances which had led to Margaret's disastrous marriage; and he felt that the young man would naturally rejoice that such a total change should be wrought in the life of his sister, who had paid so dearly for her imprudence.
A man of peculiarly simple tastes and habits, of unaffected ways of thinking about himself and other people, it rarely occurred to Fitzwilliam Baldwin to take his wealth into account; but he did so now, very reasonably. "It would not weigh with her for a minute," he thought; "but it will with them, and it will be pleasant to have them all for, and not against, me."
Life at Chayleigh had settled down again. The delusive appearance of immutability which human affairs assume--human affairs which are but a shifting quicksand--had established itself. The establishment, presided over by Margaret, went on in the ordinary way, the servants highly appreciating the change of régime; and Mr. Carteret was beginning to dispose of the days after his old fashion, when Mr. Baldwin returned to Davyntry, and Haldane Carteret arrived at Chayleigh.