She looked so truly grieved as she said this, that he struggled for a moment with his real disappointment, and then answered more cheerfully, but still with a little hardness in his tone: 

’You should make allowances for the mortification, not only of a lover, Margaret, but of a man not given to romance in general—­prudent, worldly, as some people call me—­who has been carried out of his usual habits by the force of a passion—­well, we will say no more of that; but in the one outlet which he has formed for the deeper and better feelings of his nature, he meets with rejection and repulse.  I shall have to console myself with scorning my own folly.  A struggling barrister to think of matrimony!’

Margaret could not answer this.  The whole tone of it annoyed her.  It seemed to touch on and call out all the points of difference which had often repelled her in him; while yet he was the pleasantest man, the most sympathising friend, the person of all others who understood her best in Harley Street.  She felt a tinge of contempt mingle itself with her pain at having refused him.  Her beautiful lip curled in a slight disdain.  It was well that, having made the round of the garden, they came suddenly upon Mr. Hale, whose whereabouts had been quite forgotten by them.  He had not yet finished the pear, which he had delicately peeled in one long strip of silver-paper thinness, and which he was enjoying in a deliberate manner.  It was like the story of the eastern king, who dipped his head into a basin of water, at the magician’s command, and ere he instantly took it out went through the experience of a lifetime.  I Margaret felt stunned, and unable to recover her self-possession enough to join in the trivial conversation that ensued between her father and Mr. Lennox.  She was grave, and little disposed to speak; full of wonder when Mr. Lennox would go, and allow her to relax into thought on the events of the last quarter of an hour.  He was almost as anxious to take his departure as she was for him to leave; but a few minutes light and careless talking, carried on at whatever effort, was a sacrifice which he owed to his mortified vanity, or his self-respect.  He glanced from time to time at her sad and pensive face.

‘I am not so indifferent to her as she believes,’ thought he to himself.  ‘I do not give up hope.’

Before a quarter of an hour was over, he had fallen into a way of conversing with quiet sarcasm; speaking of life in London and life in the country, as if he were conscious of his second mocking self, and afraid of his own satire.  Mr. Hale was puzzled.  His visitor was a different man to what he had seen him before at the wedding-breakfast, and at dinner to-day; a lighter, cleverer, more worldly man, and, as such, dissonant to Mr. Hale.  It was a relief to all three when Mr. Lennox said that he must go directly if he meant to catch the five o’clock train.  They proceeded to the house to find Mrs. Hale, and wish her good-bye.  At the last moment, Henry Lennox’s real self broke through the crust.