‘Good-night, papa.’

She let her colour go—­the forced smile fade away—­the eyes grow dull with heavy pain.  She released her strong will from its laborious task.  Till morning she might feel ill and weary.

She lay down and never stirred.  To move hand or foot, or even so much as one finger, would have been an exertion beyond the powers of either volition or motion.  She was so tired, so stunned, that she thought she never slept at all; her feverish thoughts passed and repassed the boundary between sleeping and waking, and kept their own miserable identity.  She could not be alone, prostrate, powerless as she was,—­a cloud of faces looked up at her, giving her no idea of fierce vivid anger, or of personal danger, but a deep sense of shame that she should thus be the object of universal regard—­a sense of shame so acute that it seemed as if she would fain have burrowed into the earth to hide herself, and yet she could not escape out of that unwinking glare of many eyes.

CHAPTER XXIV

MISTAKES CLEARED UP

’Your beauty was the first that won the place,
And scal’d the walls of my undaunted heart,
Which, captive now, pines in a caitive case,
Unkindly met with rigour for desert;—­
Yet not the less your servant shall abide,
In spite of rude repulse or silent pride.’ 
William Fowler.

The next morning, Margaret dragged herself up, thankful that the night was over,—­unrefreshed, yet rested.  All had gone well through the house; her mother had only wakened once.  A little breeze was stirring in the hot air, and though there were no trees to show the playful tossing movement caused by the wind among the leaves, Margaret knew how, somewhere or another, by way-side, in copses, or in thick green woods, there was a pleasant, murmuring, dancing sound,—­a rushing and falling noise, the very thought of which was an echo of distant gladness in her heart.

She sat at her work in Mrs. Hale’s room.  As soon as that forenoon slumber was over, she would help her mother to dress after. dinner, she would go and see Bessy Higgins.  She would banish all recollection of the Thornton family,—­no need to think of them till they absolutely stood before her in flesh and blood.  But, of course, the effort not to think of them brought them only the more strongly before her; and from time to time, the hot flush came over her pale face sweeping it into colour, as a sunbeam from between watery clouds comes swiftly moving over the sea.

Dixon opened the door very softly, and stole on tiptoe up to Margaret, sitting by the shaded window.

‘Mr. Thornton, Miss Margaret.  He is in the drawing-room.’

Margaret dropped her sewing.

‘Did he ask for me?  Isn’t papa come in?’

‘He asked for you, miss; and master is out.’