‘Nay, I have done; you get no more of me:

And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart,

That thus so clearly I myself am free.’

DRAYTON.

Margaret shut herself up in her own room, after she had quitted Mrs. Thornton. She began to walk backwards and forwards, in her old habitual way of showing agitation; but, then, remembering that in that slightly-built house every step was heard from one room to another, she sate down until she heard Mrs. Thornton go safely out of the house. She forced herself to recollect all the conversation that had passed between them; speech by speech, she compelled her memory to go through with it. At the end, she rose up, and said to herself, in a melancholy tone:

‘At any rate, her words do not touch me; they fall off from me; for I am innocent of all the motives she attributes to me. But still, it is hard to think that any one — any woman — can believe all this of another so easily. It is hard and sad. Where I have done wrong, she does not accuse me — she does not know. He never told her: I might have known he would not!’

She lifted up her head, as if she took pride in any delicacy of feeling which Mr. Thornton had shown. Then, as a new thought came across her, she pressed her hands tightly together.

‘He, too, must take poor Frederick for some lover.’ (She blushed as the word passed through her mind.) ‘I see it now. It is not merely that he knows of my falsehood, but he believes that some one else cares for me; and that I—— Oh dear! — oh dear! What shall I do? What do I mean? Why do I care what he thinks, beyond the mere loss of his good opinion as regards my telling the truth or not? I cannot tell. But I am very miserable! Oh, how unhappy this last year has been! I have passed out of childhood into old age. I have had no youth — no womanhood; the hopes of womanhood have closed for me — for I shall never marry; and I anticipate cares and sorrows just as if I were an old woman, and with the same fearful spirit. I am weary of this continual call upon me for strength. I could bear up for papa; because that is a natural, pious duty. And I think I could bear up against — at any rate, I could have the energy to resent, Mrs. Thornton’s unjust, impertinent suspicions. But it is hard to feel how completely he must misunderstand me. What has happened to make me so morbid today? I do not know. I only know I cannot help it. I must give way sometimes. No, I will not, though,’ said she, springing to her feet. ‘I will not — I will not think of myself and my own position. I won’t examine into my own feelings. It would be of no use now. Some time, if I live to be an old woman, I may sit over the fire, and, looking into the embers, see the life that might have been.’

All this time, she was hastily putting on her things to go out, only stopping from time to time to wipe her eyes, with an impatience of gesture at the tears that would come, in spite of all her bravery.

‘I dare say, there’s many a woman makes as sad a mistake as I have done, and only finds it out too late. And how proudly and impertinently I spoke to him that day! But I did not know then. It has come upon me little by little, and I don’t know where it began. Now I won’t give way. I shall find it difficult to behave in the same way to him, with this miserable consciousness upon me; but I will be very calm and very quiet, and say very little. But, to be sure, I may not see him; he keeps out of our way evidently. That would be worse than all. And yet no wonder that he avoids me, believing what he must about me.’

She went out, going rapidly towards the country, and trying to drown reflection by swiftness of motion.

As she stood on the door-step, at her return, her father came up:

‘Good girl!’ said he. ‘You’ve been to Mrs. Boucher’s. I was just meaning to go there, if I had time, before dinner.’

‘No, papa; I have not,’ said Margaret, reddening. ‘I never thought about her. But I will go directly after dinner; I will go while you are taking your nap.

Accordingly Margaret went. Mrs. Boucher was very ill; really ill — not merely ailing. The kind and sensible neighbour, who had come in the other day, seemed to have taken charge of everything. Some of the children were gone to the neighbours. Mary Higgins had come for the three youngest at dinner-time; and since then Nicholas had gone for the doctor. He had not come as yet; Mrs. Boucher was dying; and there was nothing to do but to wait. Margaret thought that she should like to know his opinion, and that she could not do better than go and see the Higginses in the meantime. She might then possibly hear whether Nicholas had been able to make his application to Mr. Thornton.

She found Nicholas busily engaged in making a penny spin on the dresser, for the amusement of three little children, who were clinging to him in a fearless manner. He, as well as they, was smiling at a good long spin; and Margaret thought, that the happy look of interest in his occupation was a good sign. When the penny stopped spinning, ‘lile Johnnie’ began to cry.

‘Come to me,’ said Margaret, taking him off the dresser, and holding him in her arms; she held her watch to his ear, while she asked Nicholas if he had seen Mr. Thornton.

The look on his face changed instantly.

‘Ay!’ said he. ‘I’ve seen and heerd too much on him.’

‘He refused you, then?’ said Margaret, sorrowfully.

‘To be sure. I knew he’d do it all long. It’s no good expecting marcy at the hands o’ them measters. Yo’re a stranger and a foreigner, and aren’t likely to know their ways; but I knowed it.’

‘I am sorry I asked you. Was he angry? He did not speak to you as Hamper did, did he?’

‘He weren’t o’er-civil!’ said Nicholas, spinning the penny again, as much for his own amusement as for that of the children. ‘Never yo’ fret, I’m only where I was. I’ll go on tramp tomorrow. I gave him as good as I got. I telled him, I’d not that good opinion on him that I’d ha’ come a second time of mysel’; but yo’d advised me for to come, and I were beholden to yo’.’

‘You told him I sent you?’

‘I dunno’ if I ca’d yo’ by your name. I dunnot think I did. I said, a woman who knew no better had advised me for to come and see if there was a soft place in his heart.’

‘And he —?’ asked Margaret.

‘Said I were to tell yo’ to mind yo’r own business. — That’s the longest spin yet, my lads. — And them’s civil words to what he used to me. But ne’er mind. We’re but where we was; and I’ll break stones on th’ road afore I let these little uns clem.’

Margaret put the struggling Johnnie out of her arms, back into his former place on the dresser.

‘I am sorry I asked you to go to Mr. Thornton’s. I am disappointed in him.’

There was a slight noise behind her. Both she and Nicholas turned round at the same moment, and there stood Mr. Thornton, with a look of displeased surprise upon his face. Obeying her swift impulse, Margaret passed out before him, saying not a word, only bowing low to hide the sudden paleness that she felt had come over her face. He bent equally low in return, and then closed the door after her. As she hurried to Mrs. Boucher’s, she heard the clang, and it seemed to fill up the measure of her mortification. He too was annoyed to find her there. He had tenderness in his heart —‘a soft place,’ as Nicholas Higgins called it; but he had some pride in concealing it; he kept it very sacred and safe, and was jealous of every circumstance that tried to gain admission. But if he dreaded exposure of his tenderness, he was equally desirous that all men should recognise his justice; and he felt that he had been unjust, in giving so scornful a hearing to any one who had waited, with humble patience, for five hours, to speak to him. That the man had spoken saucily to him when he had the opportunity, was nothing to Mr. Thornton. He rather liked him for it; and he was conscious of his own irritability of temper at the time, which probably made them both quits. It was the five hours of waiting that struck Mr. Thornton. He had not five hours to spare himself; but one hour — two hours, of his hard penetrating intellectual, as well as bodily labour, did he give up to going about collecting evidence as to the truth of Higgins’s story, the nature of his character, the tenor of his life. He tried not to be, but was convinced that all that Higgins had said was true. And then the conviction went in, as if by some spell, and touched the latent tenderness of his heart; the patience of the man, the simple generosity of the motive (for he had learnt about the quarrel between Boucher and Higgins), made him forget entirely the mere reasonings of justice, and overleap them by a diviner instinct. He came to tell Higgins he would give him work; and he was more annoyed to find Margaret there than by hearing her last words, for then he understood that she was the woman who had urged Higgins to come to him; and he dreaded the admission of any thought of her, as a motive to what he was doing solely because it was right.

‘So that was the lady you spoke of as a woman?’ said he indignantly to Higgins. ‘You might have told me who she was.

‘And then, maybe, yo’d ha’ spoken of her more civil than yo’ did; yo’d getten a mother who might ha’ kept yo’r tongue in check when yo’ were talking o’ women being at the root o’ all the plagues.’

‘Of course you told that to Miss Hale?’

‘In coorse I did. Leastways, I reckon I did. I telled her she weren’t to meddle again in aught that concerned yo’.’

‘Whose children are those — yours?’ Mr. Thornton had a pretty good notion whose they w............