A strongly appreciative friendship had sprung up between Mr. Baldwin and James Dugdale. The elder man regarded the younger without one feeling of envy of the good looks, the good health, the physical activity,--in all which he was himself deficient,--but with a thorough comprehension of the difference between them which they constituted, and an almost womanish admiration of one so richly dowered by nature. Since Mr. Baldwin's engagement to Margaret,--though James had loyally forced himself to utter the congratulations of whose truth and meaning none could form a truer estimate than he,--there had been little intercourse between them. Mr. Baldwin now claimed Margaret as his chief companion during his daily and lengthy visits to Chayleigh; and she, with all a woman's tact and instinctive delicacy, quietly aided the unobserved severance between himself and James, of which her lover was wholly unconscious. So the time--a time of such exceeding and incredible happiness to Margaret, that not all her previous experience of the delusions of life could avail to check the avidity with which she enjoyed every hour of it, and listened with greedy ears to every promise and protestation for the future--went on. On one point only she found she was not to have her own wishes carried out, wishes shared to the utmost by Mr. Baldwin. Her father did not take kindly to the idea of leaving Chayleigh. His reasons were amusingly characteristic. "You see, my dear," he said, when the matter had been urged upon him, with every kind of plea and prayer by Margaret, and with respectful earnestness by Mr. Baldwin, "I should never feel quite myself, I should never feel quite comfortable away from my collection. You, my dear Margaret, never had any great taste in that way, and of course you don't understand it; but there's Baldwin, now. You wouldn't like to part with your collection, would you? You have a great many other reasons for liking the Deane, of course, besides that; but considering only that, you would not like it?" "Good heavens, sir!" exclaimed Mr. Baldwin, "how could you imagine such a thing as that we ever dreamed of parting you and your collection? Why, we should as soon have thought of asking you to leave your arms or legs after you. Of course you'll move your collection to the Deane; there's room for a dozen of the size." Mr. Carteret was a little put out, not exactly annoyed, but _gêné_; and Margaret, who understood him perfectly, stopped her lover's flow of protestation and proposal by a look, and they soon left him to himself; whereupon Mr. Carteret immediately summoned James, and imparted to him the nature of the conversation which had just taken place.