In the mean time, she had no notion of having a gawky girl, as she called Margaret in her thoughts, always about her at home, growing old enough to interfere, and perhaps to attract her father's attention unduly and put absurd ideas into his head. Margaret Carteret was not at all gawky; but even then, at the least beautiful period of life, gave promise of the grace and distinction which, afterwards characterised her.
Mrs. Carteret made up her mind, and then informed her husband of the resolution she had taken, and the arrangements she had made. He acquiesced, as he always did; and when Margaret, startled, confused, not knowing whether to be frightened at or pleased with the novelty which the prospect offered, asked him if it was really true that she was going to school at Paris, and was not to return for a whole year, he said placidly,
"Certainly, my dear. Mrs. Carteret has arranged it all; and I have told her to be sure and ask the school people to take you to the Jardin des Plantes."
Then Mr. Carteret, who never perceived that his daughter was no longer a baby, sent her away with a pat on the head, and turned his attention to investigating the structure of a "trap-door spider's abode," which had reached him the day before, having been sent by a friend and fellow-naturalist from Corfu.
The education of Haldane Carteret had been differently provided for. It chanced that the one human being besides herself for whom Mrs. Carteret entertained a sentiment of affection was her cousin, James Dugdale, a young man who had no chance of success in any active career in life, being deformed and in delicate health--anything but a desirable tutor for a delicate retiring boy, like Haldane Carteret, people said--a boy who needed encouragement and companionship to rouse him up and make him more like other boys. But Mrs. Carteret evinced her usual indifference to the opinion of "people" on this occasion. She chose to provide for her cousin a mode of life suitable to his mental and physical constitution.
James Dugdale came to live at Chayleigh. The deformed young man had much of the talent, and all the unamiability, which so frequently accompany bodily malformation, and he inspired Margaret Carteret with intense dislike and repulsion--with admiration and some respect, too, child as she was; for she soon recognised his talent, and succumbed to his influence. James Dugdale taught Margaret as much as he taught her brother; he implanted in her the tastes which she afterwards cultivated so assiduously; but the boy learned to love him, while the girl never faltered in her dislike. When she found her lessons easily understood and soon learned at school, she knew that she had to thank her stepmother's cousin--her brother's tutor--for the aid which had rendered them light to her; but she never could bring herself to thank him in thought or word. The girl's heart was almost void of love and gratitude at this time of her life. She hardly could be said to love her father; her stepmother she neither loved, hated, nor feared; for her brother alone were all her kindly feelings hoarded up. She loved him, indeed; and, next to that love, the strongest sentiment in her heart was dislike of James Dugdale.
Time passed on, and Margaret grew up handsome, with a strongly intellectual stamp upon her face, and, in her character, self-will and impulsiveness prevailing. She liked the Parisian school--for she ruled her companions, some by love, others by fear and the power of party--and she cared little for her home, where she could not rule any one.
Her father was not worth governing; her stepmother she treated with a studious and settled indifference, forming her manner on the model of that of Mrs. Carteret, but never attempting to gain any influence over that lady, who was, however, not without a misgiving at times that when Margaret should come home "for good" she might find it rather difficult to "hold her own." Holding her own, in Mrs. Carteret's case, rather implied holding every one else's, and that privilege she felt to be in danger. It was, therefore, with but a passing reflection on the fatal obstacle which such an occurrence must offer to her maintenance of the "young married woman's" position in society, that Mrs. Carteret, when Margaret was fifteen, began to speculate upon the chances of getting Margaret "off her hands," when she should have finally left school, by an opportune marriage.
A year later, and, much to the surprise of his father, and indeed of every one who knew him except James Dugdale, Haldane Carteret proclaimed his wish and intention of entering the army. His father did not oppose; his stepmother and his tutor supported him in his inclination; the interest of a distant relative of his mother's was procured; and thus it chanced that, when Margaret came home "for good," at a little more than sixteen years old, she found her brother in all the boyish pride and exultation of his commission and his uniform.
Then Margaret's fate was not long in coming. The first time her brother came home, and while she had as yet seen little of the society in which her stepmother moved, he brought a brother officer with him, a handsome young man, named Godfrey Hungerford, with whom he had contracted a friendship--the more enthusiastic because it was the first the lad had ever experienced.