He was gone.  Not one word:  not one look to Margaret.  She believed that he had not seen her.  She went for a plate in silence, and lifted the fruit out tenderly, with the points of her delicate taper fingers.  It was good of him to bring it; and after yesterday too!

‘Oh! it is so delicious!’ said Mrs. Hale, in a feeble voice.  ’How kind of him to think of me!  Margaret love, only taste these grapes!  Was it not good of him?’

‘Yes!’ said Margaret, quietly.

‘Margaret!’ said Mrs. Hale, rather querulously, ’you won’t like anything Mr. Thornton does.  I never saw anybody so prejudiced.’

Mr. Hale had been peeling a peach for his wife; and, cutting off a small piece for himself, he said: 

’If I had any prejudices, the gift of such delicious fruit as this would melt them all away.  I have not tasted such fruit—­no! not even in Hampshire—­since I was a boy; and to boys, I fancy, all fruit is good.  I remember eating sloes and crabs with a relish.  Do you remember the matted-up currant bushes, Margaret, at the corner of the west-wall in the garden at home?’

Did she not?  Did she not remember every weather-stain on the old stone wall; the gray and yellow lichens that marked it like a map; the little crane’s-bill that grew in the crevices?  She had been shaken by the events of the last two days; her whole life just now was a strain upon her fortitude; and, somehow, these careless words of her father’s, touching on the remembrance of the sunny times of old, made her start up, and, dropping her sewing on the ground, she went hastily out of the room into her own little chamber.  She had hardly given way to the first choking sob, when she became aware of Dixon standing at her drawers, and evidently searching for something.

’Bless me, miss!  How you startled me!  Missus is not worse, is she?  Is anything the matter?’

’No, nothing.  Only I’m silly, Dixon, and want a glass of water.  What are you looking for?  I keep my muslins in that drawer.’

Dixon did not speak, but went on rummaging.  The scent of lavender came out and perfumed the room.

At last Dixon found what she wanted; what it was Margaret could not see.  Dixon faced round, and spoke to her: 

’Now I don’t like telling you what I wanted, because you’ve fretting enough to go through, and I know you’ll fret about this.  I meant to have kept it from you till night, may be, or such times as that.’

‘What is the matter?  Pray, tell me, Dixon, at once.’

‘That young woman you go to see—­Higgins, I mean.’

‘Well?’

’Well! she died this morning, and her sister is here—­come to beg a strange thing.  It seems, the young woman who died had a fancy for being buried in something of yours, and so the sister’s come to ask for it,—­and I was looking for a night-cap that wasn’t too good to give away.’

‘Oh! let me find one,’ said Margaret, in the midst of her tears.  ‘Poor Bessy!  I never thought I should not see her again.’