No!’ said Mrs. Thornton.  ’I am happy to say, I did not promise kindness and gentleness, for I felt at the time that it might be out of my power to render these to one of Miss Hale’s character and disposition.  I promised counsel and advice, such as I would give to my own daughter; I shall speak to her as I would do to Fanny, if she had gone gallivanting with a young man in the dusk.  I shall speak with relation to the circumstances I know, without being influenced either one way or another by the “strong reasons” which you will not confide to me.  Then I shall have fulfilled my promise, and done my duty.’

‘She will never bear it,’ said he passionately.

‘She will have to bear it, if I speak in her dead mother’s name.’

‘Well!’ said he, breaking away, ’don’t tell me any more about it.  I cannot endure to think of it.  It will be better that you should speak to her any way, than that she should not be spoken to at all.—­Oh! that look of love!’ continued he, between his teeth, as he bolted himself into his own private room.  ’And that cursed lie; which showed some terrible shame in the background, to be kept from the light in which I thought she lived perpetually!  Oh, Margaret, Margaret!  Mother, how you have tortured me!  Oh!  Margaret, could you not have loved me?  I am but uncouth and hard, but I would never have led you into any falsehood for me.’

The more Mrs. Thornton thought over what her son had said, in pleading for a merciful judgment for Margaret’s indiscretion, the more bitterly she felt inclined towards her.  She took a savage pleasure in the idea of ‘speaking her mind’ to her, in the guise of fulfilment of a duty.  She enjoyed the thought of showing herself untouched by the ‘glamour,’ which she was well aware Margaret had the power of throwing over many people.  She snorted scornfully over the picture of the beauty of her victim; her jet black hair, her clear smooth skin, her lucid eyes would not help to save her one word of the just and stern reproach which Mrs. Thornton spent half the night in preparing to her mind.

‘Is Miss Hale within?’ She knew she was, for she had seen her at the window, and she had her feet inside the little hall before Martha had half answered her question.

Margaret was sitting alone, writing to Edith, and giving her many particulars of her mother’s last days.  It was a softening employment, and she had to brush away the unbidden tears as Mrs. Thornton was announced.

She was so gentle and ladylike in her mode of reception that her visitor was somewhat daunted; and it became impossible to utter the speech, so easy of arrangement with no one to address it to.  Margaret’s low rich voice was softer than usual; her manner more gracious, because in her heart she was feeling very grateful to Mrs. Thornton for the courteous attention of her call.  She exerted herself to find subjects of interest for conversation; praised Martha, the