"We'll have it begun at once, Margaret," said Mr. Baldwin, who was standing by the verandah, looking out upon the shining, blue, foam-flecked sea. "I don't like a thing of that kind being put off. I wonder Dugdale does not answer for your father. And, by the bye," he continued, crossing the room, and taking a seat beside his wife, "they are tolerably busy just now at Chayleigh; it must be about the time of Mr. Meredith's arrival. What date did Dugdale mention?"
"He thought about the 25th," said Margaret.
As she spoke, the colour in her cheek waned, and there was a slight change in the expression of her face, which was a bright face now, but always mobile and a sure index to her feelings; a change which indicated to her husband, on whom no look of hers was ever lost, that the mention of Hayes Meredith's name had a disturbing effect upon her. He saw it, and understood it, and it vexed him, for, not with, her.
This was the one weakness in Margaret which troubled her perfect peace and happiness, and through them his. Not all the unequalled contentment of her lot had power to obliterate the past for her so completely as to deprive association of its power to wound.
There was one evil which all her husband's love and care could not keep quite away from her--the dark shadow of the bad bygone days when he as yet had no place in her life. She tried hard to fulfil her promise to her husband; she lived for him as truly and completely as ever any woman lived for any man, and she was a wonderfully happy human being.
But this one weakness clung to her still. The feeling of dread, misgiving, reluctance with which she had heard at first of Hayes Meredith's intention of coming to England, had never changed or lessened. She tried to escape from it, to forget it; she condemned her own weakness much more severely than Mr. Baldwin condemned it, but there it remained all the same, as present as if she had not condemned it at all. She had felt that she escaped much by being abroad when Mr. Meredith should arrive, she had blushed for her ingratitude in feeling it, she had persuaded herself that when he should have arrived, and she should know that he was in England, this strange, for the present unconquerable, feeling might wear off. It must be in a great measure nervous, she thought; it had come upon her so often and oppressively before her child's birth--surely it would vanish then. Time had brought her such immeasurably rich compensation, "good measure, pressed down, and running over," she had but this one thing more to ask of time, and that would come.
It was on a glorious day, even for Naples, that Fitzwilliam Baldwin, happily alone when it arrived, received James Dugdale's letter. Margaret, her child, and Lady Davyntry had gone out, intending to remain away for some hours, to the villa of friends of Eleanor's, who rejoiced immensely in the society of the English family. Mr. Baldwin was to join them in the afternoon, a sociable arrangement tending to rescue the ladies from boredom, without subjecting the gentleman to the same.
The writing of the letter which came to the beautiful villa by the sea, that glorious day, had been attended with difficulties which are not easily described. Partly from his knowledge of the man, and partly from the gift of insight and sympathy which he possessed in a rare degree, James Dugdale could enter into the perplexity and intricacy of the trouble of which he was the harbinger, and could follow the inevitable workings of Mr. Baldwin's mind under the circumstances. Meredith had at first proposed that the truth should not be told to Baldwin, that he should only be prepared for important news of an unpleasant character, and urged to return as speedily as possible. But James would not agree to this.
"No," he said, "the truth must be told, and borne somehow; and a plain simple statement of it to a man like Baldwin is the best thing to be done, and will enable him to bear it best. If he is kept in suspense, he will be unable to keep her from suspicion, and that is the great point for him to secure."
That Mr. Baldwin would exert himself to the utmost to conceal his feelings until they reached England, James did not doubt; and that he would acquiesce in their view of the case he felt assured. With this view, and in this spirit, the terrible letter was written; how it was read, how the full knowledge of the meaning of its contents was endured, no human being ever knew.