His feelings had undergone no change as regarded her, though, as regarded himself, they had become purified from the little dross of selfishness and vain regret that had hung about them for a little after she had left Chayleigh. He could now rejoice, with a pure and true heart, in her exceeding, her perfect happiness; he could think of her husband, whom she loved with an intense and passionate devotion which had transformed her character, as it seemed at times to transfigure her face, illumining it with a heavenly light--with ardent friendship and gratitude as the giver of such happiness, and with sincere and ungrudging admiration as the being who was capable of inspiring such a love. He could thank God now, from his inmost heart, for the change which had been wrought in, and for, the woman he loved with a love which angels might have seen with approval. All he had longed and prayed and striven for, was her good--and it had come--it had been sent in the utmost abundance; and he never murmured now, ever so lightly, that _he_ had not been suffered to count for anything in the fulfilment of his hope, in the answer to his prayer. He read, with keen delight, the simple but strong words in which Margaret described to her father the peace, happiness, companionship and luxury of her life. Only the lightest cloud had cast a shade over the brightness of Margaret's life since her marriage. She had been rather delicate in health after the birth of her child, and a warmer climate than that of Scotland had been recommended for her. Mr. Baldwin had not been sorry for the opportunity thus afforded him of indulging Margaret and himself by visiting the countries so well known to him, but which his wife had never seen. Her experience of travel had been one of wretchedness; in this respect, also, he would make the present contrast with and efface the past. The "Lady Burleigh" feeling which Margaret had anticipated had come upon her sometimes, in the stately and well-ordered luxury of her new home; she had sometimes experienced a startling sense of the discrepancy between the things she had seen and suffered, and her surroundings at the Deane; but these fitful feelings had not recurred often or remained with her long, and she had become deeply attached to her beautiful home. Nevertheless, she, too, had welcomed the prospect of a foreign tour; and during her visit, _en route_, to Chayleigh, she had spoken so freely and frequently to James of her anticipations of pleasure, of the delight she took in her husband's cultivated taste, and in his manifold learning, that James perceived how rapidly and variously her intellect had developed in the sunshine of happiness and domestic love. "Though she has always been the first of women in my mind," James Dugdale had said to himself then, "I would not have said she was either decidedly clever or decidedly handsome formerly, and now she is both beautiful and brilliant."