When he was gone, she thought she had seen the gleam of washed tears in his eyes; and that turned her proud dislike into something different and kinder, if nearly as painful—­self-reproach for having caused such mortification to any one.

‘But how could I help it?’ asked she of herself.  ’I never liked him.  I was civil; but I took no trouble to conceal my indifference.  Indeed, I never thought about myself or him, so my manners must have shown the truth.  All that yesterday, he might mistake.  But that is his fault, not mine.  I would do it again, if need were, though it does lead me into all this shame and trouble.’

CHAPTER XXV

FREDERICK

’Revenge may have her own;
Roused discipline aloud proclaims their cause,
And injured navies urge their broken laws.’ 
Byron.

Margaret began to wonder whether all offers were as unexpected beforehand,—­as distressing at the time of their occurrence, as the two she had had.  An involuntary comparison between Mr. Lennox and Mr. Thornton arose in her mind.  She had been sorry, that an expression of any other feeling than friendship had been lured out by circumstances from Henry Lennox.  That regret was the predominant feeling, on the first occasion of her receiving a proposal.  She had not felt so stunned—­so impressed as she did now, when echoes of Mr. Thornton’s voice yet lingered about the room.  In Lennox’s case, he seemed for a moment to have slid over the boundary between friendship and love; and the instant afterwards, to regret it nearly as much as she did, although for different reasons.  In Mr. Thornton’s case, as far as Margaret knew, there was no intervening stage of friendship.  Their intercourse had been one continued series of opposition.  Their opinions clashed; and indeed, she had never perceived that he had cared for her opinions, as belonging to her, the individual.  As far as they defied his rock-like power of character, his passion-strength, he seemed to throw them off from him with contempt, until she felt the weariness of the exertion of making useless protests; and now, he had come, in this strange wild passionate way, to make known his love For, although at first it had struck her, that his offer was forced and goaded out of him by sharp compassion for the exposure she had made of herself,—­which he, like others, might misunderstand—­yet, even before he left the room,—­and certainly, not five minutes after, the clear conviction dawned upon her, shined bright upon her, that he did love her; that he had loved her; that he would love her.  And she shrank and shuddered as under the fascination of some great power, repugnant to her whole previous life.  She crept away, and hid from his idea.  But it was of no use.  To parody a line oat of Fairfax’s Tasso—­

‘His strong idea wandered through her thought.’