No more was said then on this subject, and Mr. Baldwin dismissed it from his mind. The conversation he had had with his wife had just so much effect upon him and no more, that he took very little notice of Robert, and displayed no more interest than politeness demanded in the discussions concerning him and his future, which just then shared the attention of the family party at Chayleigh with Captain Carteret's rapidly approaching marriage. This circumstance the young gentleman was not slow to notice, and it had the effect of intensifying the feeling with which he regarded Margaret. "She has put her fine husband up to snubbing me, has she?" he said to himself one day, when Mr. Baldwin had taken less notice of him than usual. "Now I wonder what _that's_ for. Perhaps she's afraid of the goodness of my memory. I daresay she has told him a whole pack of lies about the time she was in Melbourne, and she's afraid, if I walked or rode out with him, I might get upon the subject. And I only wish he would give me a chance, that's all." But nothing was more unlikely than that Mr. Baldwin should give Robert Meredith such a "chance," and that the boy's natural quickness soon made him understand. The only person with whom he associated at this time, who afforded him any opportunity for his spiteful confidences, was the bride-elect. Lucy was still pleased by the unrepressed admiration of the only male creature within the sphere of Mrs. Baldwin's influence who was wholly unimpressed by her attractions. The "great friend's" project, though, according to Miss Lucy Crofton's somewhat shallow perceptions, triumphantly successful, did not in the least interfere with so thoroughly legitimate a development of feminine proclivities. To be sure, the subject of Margaret's first marriage, and her disastrous life in Melbourne, was one which Lucy had never heard touched upon, even in the most intimate conversations among the family at Chayleigh. Her affianced Haldane had never spoken to her, except in the briefest and most general terms, of that painful episode in the family history. But that did not constitute, according to Lucy's not very scrupulous or refined code of delicacy, any barrier to her talking and hearing as much about it in any other available manner as she could.