Fitzwilliam Baldwin did not cordially like Robert Meredith. He felt that he did not understand the boy, and his frank nature involuntarily recoiled, with an unexplained antipathy, from contact with a disposition so voilée, so little open, so calculating, as his observation convinced him that of Robert Meredith was. Quite unselfish, and very simple in his habits and ideas, Mr. Baldwin was none the less apt to discover the absence or the opposite of those qualities, and it was very shortly after their return to Chayleigh that he said to his wife,
"Meredith intends to make a lawyer of his son, he tells me."
"Yes," said Margaret, "it is quite decided, I understand. I daresay he will do well, he has plenty of ability."
"He has, and a few other qualifications, such as cunning and coolness, and a grand faculty for taking care of himself, which people say are calculated to insure success in that line of life."
"You don't like lawyers," said Margaret.
"I don't like Robert Meredith; do you? said her husband.
"No," she replied promptly, "I do not; more than that, I ought to be ashamed of myself, I suppose, and yet I can't contrive to be; but I dislike the boy extremely, more than I could venture to tell; the feeling I have about him troubles me--it is difficult for me to hide it."
"I don't think you do hide it, Margaret," said Baldwin; "I only know you did not hide it from me. I never saw you laboriously polite and attentive to any one before; your kindness to every one is genuine, as everything else about you, darling; but to this youngster you are not spontaneous by any means."
"You are right," she said, "I am not. There is something hateful to me about him. I suppose I am afflicted with one of those feminine follies which I have always despised, and have taken an antipathy to the boy. Very wrong, and very ungrateful of me," she added sorrowfully.
"Neither wrong nor ungrateful," her husband answered in a tone of remonstrance. "You are ready to do him all the substantial benefit in your power, as I am, for his father's sake. There is no ingratitude in that, and as for your not liking him being wrong--"