"You see, Dugdale," continued Meredith, after he had mended the fire, and thrown himself back in his chair, with his hands extended, and the finger tips joined in an attitude of demonstration, "this matter has more than one side to it; more than the side I can see you are dwelling on, very painfully, and very naturally--Margaret's feelings. As for that part of it, it is dreadful, of course; but then she need never know any of the particulars." "I hope not--I trust not," said Dugdale in a low constrained voice. "If I know anything of her, the idea of the scene you describe taking place while she was in the midst of happiness and luxury would make her wretched for many a day. Think of her having to endure that, after having already lived through the horror of believing that the man she had loved, and sacrificed herself for, was murdered." Meredith looked at James, closely and inquiringly, for a moment. This intense comprehension, this almost painful, truth and excess of sympathy, puzzled him. While the external consequences of the discovery which had been made, the results to Mrs. Baldwin herself, her husband, and her child pressed upon his own attention, James was lost in the sentimental bearing of the matter, in the retrospective personal grief which it must cause to Margaret, estimating her feelings at a high degree of refinement and intensity. Meredith could not make this out very clearly, but thinking "it is just like him; he always was a strange dreamy creature, who never looked at anything like other people," he went on to discuss the subject from his own point of view. "That is all very true, Dugdale," he continued, "and, as I said before, I really do not see that she need ever know more than the fact stated in that paper. But what you and I have got to consider, without unnecessary delay, and to act upon with all possible promptitude, is this fact: at the present moment Margaret is not Mr. Baldwin's wife, and her daughter, who, if I understand your statement aright, is heiress to all her father's property, is illegitimate." "The child would inherit all if there were no son," said James. "Precisely so. Now, you see, Dugdale, this is the great question. If we can contrive to inform Mr. Baldwin of what has happened, and get him to break it as gently as possible to Margaret, and then have them married privately, of course there need not be any difficulty about that; and without an hour's unnecessary delay things may be all right, and no one in the world but ourselves and themselves a bit the wiser. If the first child had been a son, it would indeed have been a bad, a hopeless business; but the little girl will be no worse off if her mother has a son, and I daresay she will have half-a-dozen. Cheer up, Dugdale; you see it is not so black as it looked at first; there is some unpleasantness to be gone through, and then you will see all will come right."