"A great deal of this is Lady Davyntry's fault; I must say, though she and I are the greatest friends--as such near relations ought to be--she does worry me sometimes. However, she is not here to worry me now; she is at the Deane, and writes to Mr. Carteret almost every day, of course about nothing but the children. If they are made so much of now when they are infants, what will it be when they are grown up enough to understand, and be utterly spoiled by it, as of course they must be? It would not be easy to imagine worse training for the heiresses; however, you don't want me to moralise about them, but to tell you some news. And so I would, my dear Minnie, if I had any to tell, but I have not. "Mr. Dugdale is, if possible, less amusing than ever: but I see very little of him. He has installed himself in poor Margaret's room--fortunately for me it is not the best room, as I suspect I should have had some difficulty in making him decamp, for he is excessively pertinacious in a quiet way, and as for Mr. Carteret interfering, one might as well expect one of his pinned butterflies to stand up for one's rights; so there he generally is, except at meal-times, or when he is wandering about at Davyntry. The fact is, the house, and every one in it, is be-Baldwinised to an intolerable extent. "Of course I was dreadfully sorry for poor dear Margaret. I must have been, considering she was my sister-in-law, if even she had not been my greatest friend; but there is reason in everything, and I should not be doing my duty to Haldane if I went on fretting for ever; there's nothing men dislike so much in women as moping, or an over-exhibition of feeling. I assure you if she had died only last week--and after all, the melancholy event took place at the Deane, you know, and not here at all--the house could not be more mopey. "I don't think it is quite fair to me, considering the state of my health, and that my spirits naturally require a little rousing; and really sometimes, when I can get nothing out of Mr. Carteret but 'Yes, my dear,' or 'No, my dear,' and when I know he is thinking rather of Margaret or of the collection--such a lot of trash as it is, and it takes up such a quantity of room--I am quite provoked. And as for Mr. Dugdale, it is worse; for though he is very polite, I declare I don't think he ever really sees me, and I am sure, if he was asked suddenly, on oath, he could not tell whether my hair is red, black, or gray. And _it_ is a nuisance when there are only two men in the house with one that they should be men of that sort.