'Nay,' said he, 'I will ask no farther. I may be putting
temptation in your way. At present, believe me, your secret is
safe with me. But you run great risks, allow me to say, in being
so indiscreet. I am now only speaking as a friend of your
father's: if I had any other thought or hope, of course that is
at an end. I am quite disinterested.' 'I am aware of that,' said Margaret, forcing herself to speak in
an indifferent, careless way. 'I am aware of what I must appear
to you, but the secret is another person's, and I cannot explain
it without doing him harm.' 'I have not the slightest wish to pry into the gentleman's
secrets,' he said, with growing anger. 'My own interest in you
is--simply that of a friend. You may not believe me, Miss Hale,
but it is--in spite of the persecution I'm afraid I threatened
you with at one time--but that is all given up; all passed away.
You believe me, Miss Hale?' 'Yes,' said Margaret, quietly and sadly.
'Then, really, I don't see any occasion for us to go on walking
together. I thought, perhaps you might have had something to say,
but I see we are nothing to each other. If you're quite
convinced, that any foolish passion on my part is entirely over,
I will wish you good afternoon.' He walked off very hastily.
'What can he mean?' thought Margaret,--'what could he mean by
speaking so, as if I were always thinking that he cared for me,
when I know he does not; he cannot. His mother will have said all
those cruel things about me to him. But I won't care for him. I
surely am mistress enough of myself to control this wild,
strange, miserable feeling, which tempted me even to betray my
own dear Frederick, so that I might but regain his good
opinion--the good opinion of a man who takes such pains to tell
me that I am nothing to him. Come poor little heart! be cheery
and brave. We'll be a great deal to one another, if we are thrown
off and left desolate.' Her father was almost startled by her merriment this afternoon.
She talked incessantly, and forced her natural humour to an
unusual pitch; and if there was a tinge of bitterness in much of
what she said; if her accounts of the old Harley Street set were
a little sarcastic, her father could not bear to check her, as he
would have done at another time--for he was glad to see her shake
off her cares. In the middle of the evening, she was called down
to speak to Mary Higgins; and when she came back, Mr. Hale
imagined that he saw traces of tears on her cheeks. But that
could not be, for she brought good news--that Higgins had got
work at Mr. Thornton's mill. Her spirits were damped, at any
rate, and she found it very difficult to go on talking at all,
much more in the wild way that she had done. For some days her
spirits varied strangely; and her father was beginning to be
anxious about her, when news arrived from one or two quarters
that promised some change and variety for her. Mr. Hale received
a letter from Mr. Bell, in which that gentleman volunteered a
visit to them; and Mr. Hale imagined that the promised society of
his old Oxford friend would give as agreeable a turn to
Margaret's ideas as it did to his own. Margaret tried to take an
interest in what pleased her father; but she was too languid to
care about any Mr. Bell, even though he were twenty times her
godfather. She was more roused by a letter from Edith, full of
sympathy about her aunt's death; full of details about herself,
her husband, and child; and at the end saying, that as the
climate did not suit, the baby, and as Mrs. Shaw was talking of
returning to England, she thought it probable that Captain Lennox
might sell out, and that they might all go and live again in the
old Harley Street house; which, however, would seem very
incomplete with-out Margaret. Margaret yearned after that old
house, and the placid tranquillity of that old well-ordered,
monotonous life. She had found it occasionally tiresome while it
lasted; but since then she had been buffeted about, and felt so
exhausted by this recent struggle with herself, that she thought
that even stagnation would be a rest and a refreshment. So she
began to look towards a long visit to the Lennoxes, on their
return to England, as to a point--no, not of hope--but of
leisure, in which she could regain her power and command over
herself. At present it seemed to her as if all subjects tended
towards Mr. Thornton; as if she could not for-get him with all
her endeavours. If she went to see the Higginses, she heard of
him there; her father had resumed their readings together, and
quoted his opinions perpetually; even Mr. Bell's visit brought
his tenant's name upon the tapis; for he wrote word that he
believed he must be occupied some great part of his time with Mr.
Thornton, as a new lease was in preparation, and the terms of it
must be agreed upon.