Mr. Thornton at first was puzzled to account for her silence; and then he remembered the lie she had told, and all that was foregone.  ‘The exact truth!’ said he.  ’Very few people do speak the exact truth.  I have given up hoping for it.  Miss Hale, have you no explanation to give me?  You must perceive what I cannot but think.’

Margaret was silent.  She was wondering whether an explanation of any kind would be consistent with her loyalty to Frederick.

‘Nay,’ said he, ’I will ask no farther.  I may be putting temptation in your way.  At present, believe me, your secret is safe with me.  But you run great risks, allow me to say, in being so indiscreet.  I am now only speaking as a friend of your father’s:  if I had any other thought or hope, of course that is at an end.  I am quite disinterested.’

‘I am aware of that,’ said Margaret, forcing herself to speak in an indifferent, careless way.  ’I am aware of what I must appear to you, but the secret is another person’s, and I cannot explain it without doing him harm.’

’I have not the slightest wish to pry into the gentleman’s secrets,’ he said, with growing anger.  ’My own interest in you is—­simply that of a friend.  You may not believe me, Miss Hale, but it is—­in spite of the persecution I’m afraid I threatened you with at one time—­but that is all given up; all passed away.  You believe me, Miss Hale?’

‘Yes,’ said Margaret, quietly and sadly.

’Then, really, I don’t see any occasion for us to go on walking together.  I thought, perhaps you might have had something to say, but I see we are nothing to each other.  If you’re quite convinced, that any foolish passion on my part is entirely over, I will wish you good afternoon.’  He walked off very hastily.

‘What can he mean?’ thought Margaret,—­’what could he mean by speaking so, as if I were always thinking that he cared for me, when I know he does not; he cannot.  His mother will have said all those cruel things about me to him.  But I won’t care for him.  I surely am mistress enough of myself to control this wild, strange, miserable feeling, which tempted me even to betray my own dear Frederick, so that I might but regain his good opinion—­the good opinion of a man who takes such pains to tell me that I am nothing to him.  Come poor little heart! be cheery and brave.  We’ll be a great deal to one another, if we are thrown off and left desolate.’

Her father was almost startled by her merriment this afternoon.  She talked incessantly, and forced her natural humour to an unusual pitch; and if there was a tinge of bitterness in much of what she said; if her accounts of the old Harley Street set were a little sarcastic, her father could not bear to check her, as he would have done at another time—­for he was glad to see her shake off her cares.  In the middle of the evening, she was called down to speak to Mary Higgins; and when she came back, Mr. Hale imagined that he saw traces of tears on her cheeks.