’Margaret, don’t despise me; I have a heart, notwithstanding all this good-for-nothing way of talking.  As a proof of it, I believe I love you more than ever—­if I do not hate you—­for the disdain with which you have listened to me during this last half-hour.  Good-bye, Margaret—­Margaret!’

CHAPTER IV

DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES

’Cast me upon some naked shore,
Where I may tracke
Only the print of some sad wracke,
If thou be there, though the seas roare,
I shall no gentler calm implore.’ 
HABINGTON.

He was gone.  The house was shut up for the evening.  No more deep blue skies or crimson and amber tints.  Margaret went up to dress for the early tea, finding Dixon in a pretty temper from the interruption which a visitor had naturally occasioned on a busy day.  She showed it by brushing away viciously at Margaret’s hair, under pretence of being in a great hurry to go to Mrs. Hale.  Yet, after all, Margaret had to wait a long time in the drawing-room before her mother came down.  She sat by herself at the fire, with unlighted candles on the table behind her, thinking over the day, the happy walk, happy sketching, cheerful pleasant dinner, and the uncomfortable, miserable walk in the garden.

How different men were to women!  Here was she disturbed and unhappy, because her instinct had made anything but a refusal impossible; while he, not many minutes after he had met with a rejection of what ought to have been the deepest, holiest proposal of his life, could speak as if briefs, success, and all its superficial consequences of a good house, clever and agreeable society, were the sole avowed objects of his desires.  Oh dear! how she could have loved him if he had but been different, with a difference which she felt, on reflection, to be one that went low—­deep down.  Then she took it into her head that, after all, his lightness might be but assumed, to cover a bitterness of disappointment which would have been stamped on her own heart if she had loved and been rejected.

Her mother came into the room before this whirl of thoughts was adjusted into anything like order.  Margaret had to shake off the recollections of what had been done and said through the day, and turn a sympathising listener to the account of how Dixon had complained that the ironing-blanket had been burnt again; and how Susan Lightfoot had been seen with artificial flowers in her bonnet, thereby giving evidence of a vain and giddy character.  Mr. Hale sipped his tea in abstracted silence; Margaret had the responses all to herself.  She wondered how her father and mother could be so forgetful, so regardless of their companion through the day, as never to mention his name.  She forgot that he had not made them an offer.

After tea Mr. Hale got up, and stood with his elbow on the chimney-piece, leaning his head on his hand, musing over something, and from time to time sighing deeply.  Mrs. Hale went out to consult with Dixon about some winter clothing for the poor.  Margaret was preparing her mother’s worsted work, and rather shrinking from the thought of the long evening, and wishing bed-time were come that she might go over the events of the day again.