But a day of still greater change came--a sad and heavy day to James Dugdale, and of tremendous loss and evil to the orphan girls. Lady Davyntry died--not suddenly, but unexpectedly--and the full responsibility of the guardianship of Gertrude and Eleanor Baldwin was thrown upon Haldane Carteret and James Dugdale. Davyntry, in which Mr. Baldwin's sister had only a life interest, passed into the possession of the young man who had succeeded to the title on the death of Sir Richard Davyntry; and the choice of the guardians to the young girls, as to the future home of their wards, lay between Chayleigh and the Deane, of which it became possible for them to resume possession shortly after Lady Davyntry's death. When the decision which assigned the Deane to the young heiresses as their future abode had been reached and acted upon, Robert Meredith naturally ceased to have much intercourse with the Carterets and with James Dugdale. Haldane was very much pleased with the kind of life he led at the Deane. He made a first-rate "country gentleman," an ardent sportsman, a pleasant companion, hospitable, kind-hearted, _insouciant_, fond of the place and of everything in it, devoted to his wife--"absurdly so," as the spinsters of the neighbourhood, a remarkably numerous class even for Scotland, declared--and most indulgent and affectionate to his nieces. This latter quality the aforesaid spinsters accounted for satisfactorily on the double grounds, that it was not likely he would be anything but indulgent to such rich girls--of course he expected to be well recompensed when they came into "all their property"--and that, as he had no children of his own, he might very well care for his "poor dear sister's fatherless girls." The worthy ex-captain of artillery knew little and cared less how people accounted for the strange phenomena of his fulfilling carefully and conscientiously a sacred duty. He was a good, happy, unsuspicious man, and "the children" loved him better than any one in the world, except James Dugdale and Rose Doran. Mrs. Carteret was in the habit of "going south" much more frequently than Haldane did so; she liked a few weeks in London in the season, and she scrupulously visited her own family, by whom she was regarded with much affection and admiration, not quite unmingled with awe. The eldest Miss Crofton's "match" had "turned out" much better than the family had expected, and Lucy Carteret shone very brilliantly indeed in the reflected light shed upon her by the wealth and station of her husband's nieces and wards. On the occasion of her visits to England she always saw a good deal of Robert Meredith; and so--owing to the convenience of modern locomotion, Mrs. Carteret's former home had been brought within easy reach of London--Robert was a not unfrequent guest of old Mr. Crofton's when his daughter was sojourning there. Chayleigh had been advantageously let by Haldane for some years beyond the term of his nieces' minority.