’Then, mother, you make me love her more.  She is unjustly treated by you, and I must make the balance even.  But why do we talk of love or hatred?  She does not care for me, and that is enough,—­too much.  Let us never name the subject again.  It is the only thing you can do for me in the matter.  Let us never name her.’

’With all my heart.  I only wish that she, and all belonging to her, were swept back to the place they came from.’

He stood still, gazing into the fire for a minute or two longer.  Her dry dim eyes filled with unwonted tears as she looked at him; but she seemed just as grim and quiet as usual when he next spoke.

’Warrants are out against three men for conspiracy, mother.  The riot yesterday helped to knock up the strike.’

And Margaret’s name was no more mentioned between Mrs. Thornton and her son.  They fell back into their usual mode of talk,—­about facts, not opinions, far less feelings.  Their voices and tones were calm and cold a stranger might have gone away and thought that he had never seen such frigid indifference of demeanour between such near relations.

CHAPTER XXVII

FRUIT-PIECE

’For never any thing can be amiss
When simpleness and duty tender it.’ 
Midsummer night’s dream.

Mr. Thornton went straight and clear into all the interests of the following day.  There was a slight demand for finished goods; and as it affected his branch of the trade, he took advantage of it, and drove hard bargains.  He was sharp to the hour at the meeting of his brother magistrates,—­giving them the best assistance of his strong sense, and his power of seeing consequences at a glance, and so coming to a rapid decision.  Older men, men of long standing in the town, men of far greater wealth—­realised and turned into land, while his was all floating capital, engaged in his trade—­looked to him for prompt, ready wisdom.  He was the one deputed to see and arrange with the police—­to lead in all the requisite steps.  And he cared for their unconscious deference no more than for the soft west wind, that scarcely made the smoke from the great tall chimneys swerve in its straight upward course.  He was not aware of the silent respect paid to him.  If it had been otherwise, he would have felt it as an obstacle in his progress to the object he had in view.  As it was, he looked to the speedy accomplishment of that alone.  It was his mother’s greedy ears that sucked in, from the women-kind of these magistrates and wealthy men, how highly Mr. This or Mr. That thought of Mr. Thornton; that if he had not been there, things would have gone on very differently,—­very badly, indeed.  He swept off his business right and left that day.  It seemed as though his deep mortification of yesterday, and the stunned purposeless course of the hours afterwards, had cleared away all the mists from his intellect.  He felt his power and revelled in it.  He could almost defy his heart.  If he had known it, he could have sang the song of the miller who lived by the river Dee:—­