‘For my mother’s sake,’ said Margaret, in a tearful voice, ’I will bear much; but I cannot bear everything.  She never meant me to be exposed to insult, I am sure.’

‘Insult, Miss Hale!’

‘Yes, madam,’ said Margaret more steadily, ’it is insult.  What do you know of me that should lead you to suspect—­Oh!’ said she, breaking down, and covering her face with her hands—­’I know now, Mr. Thornton has told you——­’

‘No, Miss Hale,’ said Mrs. Thornton, her truthfulness causing her to arrest the confession Margaret was on the point of making, though her curiosity was itching to hear it.  ’Stop.  Mr. Thornton has told me nothing.  You do not know my son.  You are not worthy to know him.  He said this.  Listen, young lady, that you may understand, if you can, what sort of a man you rejected.  This Milton manufacturer, his great tender heart scorned as it was scorned, said to me only last night, “Go to her.  I have good reason to know that she is in some strait, arising out of some attachment; and she needs womanly counsel.”  I believe those were his very words.  Farther than that—­beyond admitting the fact of your being at the Outwood station with a gentleman, on the evening of the twenty-sixth—­he has said nothing—­not one word against you.  If he has knowledge of anything which should make you sob so, he keeps it to himself.’

Margaret’s face was still hidden in her hands, the fingers of which were wet with tears.  Mrs. Thornton was a little mollified.

’Come, Miss Hale.  There may be circumstances, I’ll allow, that, if explained, may take off from the seeming impropriety.’

Still no answer.  Margaret was considering what to say; she wished to stand well with Mrs. Thornton; and yet she could not, might not, give any explanation.  Mrs. Thornton grew impatient.

’I shall be sorry to break off an acquaintance; but for Fanny’s sake—­as I told my son, if Fanny had done so we should consider it a great disgrace—­and Fanny might be led away——­’

‘I can give you no explanation,’ said Margaret, in a low voice.  ’I have done wrong, but not in the way you think or know about.  I think Mr. Thornton judges me more mercifully than you;’—­she had hard work to keep herself from choking with her tears—­’but, I believe, madam, you mean to do rightly.’

‘Thank you,’ said Mrs. Thornton, drawing herself up; ’I was not aware that my meaning was doubted.  It is the last time I shall interfere.  I was unwilling to consent to do it, when your mother asked me.  I had not approved of my son’s attachment to you, while I only suspected it.  You did not appear to me worthy of him.  But when you compromised yourself as you did at the time of the riot, and exposed yourself to the comments of servants and workpeople, I felt it was no longer right to set myself against my son’s wish of proposing to you—­a wish, by the way, which he had always denied entertaining until the day of the riot.’  Margaret winced, and drew in her breath with a long, hissing sound; of which, however, Mrs. Thornton took no notice.  ’He came; you had apparently changed your mind.  I told my son yesterday, that I thought it possible, short as was the interval, you might have heard or learnt something of this other lover——­’