"I must have lost it on our journey to Oxford, I suppose," said Meredith. "It's of no consequence; there was no money in it, and nobody but myself could understand the memoranda." The second exception was of a graver kind; it, too, arose on Meredith's part. "I am sorry to see Margaret looking so ill," he said. "I was very much struck by her looks this evening. Has she been looking so ill as this since I saw her last?" "No," replied James; "she has overexerted herself lately, I fancy, and she has never gotten over the shock." "Has she not?" said Meredith quickly. "That's a very bad job; very likely to tell against her, I should think. Isn't it rather weak of her, though, to dwell so much as to injure her health on a thing that is of so little real consequence, after all?" "I suppose it is," said James; and he seemed unwilling to say more. But the matter had evidently made an impression on Meredith, for he said again, "I thought her looking very ill, feverish, and nervous, and quite unlike herself. Do you think Baldwin perceives it?" "No," said James shortly, "I don't think he does. Margaret never complains." "Well, well, it will all be right when the heir to the Deane comes to put an end to uncertainty and fear, if she has any." And then he led the conversation to his own affairs. "I like your friend so much, Madge," said Lady Davyntry to Mrs. Baldwin, as the sisters-in-law were enjoying the customary dressing-room confabulation. "He is such a frank, hearty, good fellow, and not the least rough, or what we think of as 'colonial' in his manners. What a pleasure it must have been to you to see him again!" "Yes," said Margaret absently. "How tired your voice sounds, darling! you are quite knocked up, I am afraid. You must go to bed at once, and try to be all right by to-morrow. I delight in the idea of a wedding; it is ages since I have been at one, except yours. What sort of a boy is Mr. Meredith's son?" she continued, in a discursive way to which she was rather prone; "he looks clever." "He looks knowing," said Margaret, "more than clever, I think. I don't like him." "If she knew--if she, too, only knew," ran the changeless refrain of Margaret's thoughts when she was again alone, "if she could but know what I have lived through since she saw me last! What a change has fallen on everything--what a deadly blight! How hard, and how utterly in vain I strive against this phantom which haunts me! If I had but listened to the warning which came to me when I found out first that he loved me, the warning which her words and the yearning of my own weak heart dispelled! If I had but heeded the secret inspiration which told me my past should never be taken into any honest, unsullied life! And yet, my God, how happy, how wonderfully, fearfully happy I was for a while--for happiness is a fearful thing in this perishing world. Would I have heeded any warning that bade me renounce it? Could I have given him up, even for his own sake?"