'Miss Hale looks well, ma'am,--doesn't she? Mrs. Shaw's coral
couldn't have come in better. It just gives the right touch of
colour, ma'am. Otherwise, Miss Margaret, you would have been too
pale.' Margaret's black hair was too thick to be plaited; it needed
rather to be twisted round and round, and have its fine silkiness
compressed into massive coils, that encircled her head like a
crown, and then were gathered into a large spiral knot behind.
She kept its weight together by two large coral pins, like small
arrows for length. Her white silk sleeves were looped up with
strings of the same material, and on her neck, just below the
base of her curved and milk-white throat, there lay heavy coral
beads.
'Oh, Margaret! how I should like to be going with you to one of
the old Barrington assemblies,--taking you as Lady Beresford used
to take me.' Margaret kissed her mother for this little burst of
maternal vanity; but she could hardly smile at it, she felt so
much out of spirits.
'I would rather stay at home with you,--much rather, mamma.' 'Nonsense, darling! Be sure you notice the dinner well. I shall
like to hear how they manage these things in Milton. Particularly
the second course, dear. Look what they have instead of game.' Mrs. Hale would have been more than interested,--she would have
been astonished, if she had seen the sumptuousness of the
dinner-table and its appointments. Margaret, with her London
cultivated taste, felt the number of delicacies to be oppressive
one half of the quantity would have been enough, and the effect
lighter and more elegant. But it was one of Mrs. Thornton's
rigorous laws of hospitality, that of each separate dainty enough
should be provided for all the guests to partake, if they felt
inclined. Careless to abstemiousness in her daily habits, it was
part of her pride to set a feast before such of her guests as
cared for it. Her son shared this feeling. He had never
known--though he might have imagined, and had the capability to
relish--any kind of society but that which depended on an
exchange of superb meals and even now, though he was denying
himself the personal expenditure of an unnecessary sixpence, and
had more than once regretted that the invitations for this dinner
had been sent out, still, as it was to be, he was glad to see the
old magnificence of preparation. Margaret and her father were the
first to arrive. Mr. Hale was anxiously punctual to the time
specified. There was no one up-stairs in the drawing-room but
Mrs. Thornton and Fanny. Every cover was taken off, and the
apartment blazed forth in yellow silk damask and a
brilliantly-flowered carpet. Every corner seemed filled up with
ornament, until it became a weariness to the eye, and presented a
strange contrast to the bald ugliness of the look-out into the
great mill-yard, where wide folding gates were thrown open for
the admission of carriages. The mill loomed high on the left-hand
side of the windows, casting a shadow down from its many stories,
which darkened the summer evening before its time.