It was past the usual tea-time when she reached home; but she had
the comfort of feeling that no one had been kept waiting for her;
and of thinking her own thoughts while she rested, instead of
anxiously watching another person to learn whether to be grave or
gay. After tea she resolved to examine a large packet of letters,
and pick out those that were to be destroyed.
Among them she came to four or five of Mr. Henry Lennox's,
relating to Frederick's affairs; and she carefully read them over
again, with the sole intention, when she began, to ascertain
exactly on how fine a chance the justification of her brother
hung. But when she had finished the last, and weighed the pros
and cons, the little personal revelation of character contained
in them forced itself on her notice. It was evident enough, from
the stiffness of the wording, that Mr. Lennox had never forgotten
his relation to her in any interest he might feel in the subject
of the correspondence. They were clever letters; Margaret saw
that in a twinkling; but she missed out of them all hearty and
genial atmosphere. They were to be preserved, however, as
valuable; so she laid them carefully on one side. When this
little piece of business was ended, she fell into a reverie; and
the thought of her absent father ran strangely in Margaret's head
this night. She almost blamed herself for having felt her
solitude (and consequently his absence) as a relief; but these
two days had set her up afresh, with new strength and brighter
hope. Plans which had lately appeared to her in the guise of
tasks, now appeared like pleasures. The morbid scales had fallen
from her eyes, and she saw her position and her work more truly.
If only Mr. Thornton would restore her the lost friendship,--nay,
if he would only come from time to time to cheer her father as in
former days,--though she should never see him, she felt as if the
course of her future life, though not brilliant in prospect,
might lie clear and even before her. She sighed as she rose up to
go to bed. In spite of the 'One step's enough for me,'--in spite
of the one plain duty of devotion to her father,--there lay at
her heart an anxiety and a pang of sorrow.
And Mr. Hale thought of Margaret, that April evening, just as
strangely and as persistently as she was thinking of him. He had
been fatigued by going about among his old friends and old
familiar places. He had had exaggerated ideas of the change which
his altered opinions might make in his friends' reception of him;
but although some of them might have felt shocked or grieved or
indignant at his falling off in the abstract, as soon as they saw
the face of the man whom they had once loved, they forgot his
opinions in himself; or only remembered them enough to give an
additional tender gravity to their manner. For Mr. Hale had not
been known to many; he had belonged to one of the smaller
colleges, and had always been shy and reserved; but those who in
youth had cared to penetrate to the delicacy of thought and
feeling that lay below his silence and indecision, took him to
their hearts, with something of the protecting kindness which
they would have shown to a woman. And the renewal of this
kindliness, after the lapse of years, and an interval of so much
change, overpowered him more than any roughness or expression of
disapproval could have done.