Was it to be so sudden then? thought Margaret; and yet perhaps it was as well.  Lingering would only add stings to the pain; it was better to be stunned into numbness by hearing of all these arrangements, which seemed to be nearly completed before she had been told.  ‘What does mamma say?’ asked she, with a deep sigh.

To her surprise, her father began to walk about again before he answered.  At length he stopped and replied: 

’Margaret, I am a poor coward after all.  I cannot bear to give pain.  I know so well your mother’s married life has not been all she hoped—­all she had a right to expect—­and this will be such a blow to her, that I have never had the heart, the power to tell her.  She must be told though, now,’ said he, looking wistfully at his daughter.  Margaret was almost overpowered with the idea that her mother knew nothing of it all, and yet the affair was so far advanced!

‘Yes, indeed she must,’ said Margaret.  ’Perhaps, after all, she may not—­Oh yes! she will, she must be shocked’—­as the force of the blow returned upon herself in trying to realise how another would take it.  ‘Where are we to go to?’ said she at last, struck with a fresh wonder as to their future plans, if plans indeed her father had.

‘To Milton-Northern,’ he answered, with a dull indifference, for he had perceived that, although his daughter’s love had made her cling to him, and for a moment strive to soothe him with her love, yet the keenness of the pain was as fresh as ever in her mind.

‘Milton-Northern!  The manufacturing town in Darkshire?’

‘Yes,’ said he, in the same despondent, indifferent way.

‘Why there, papa?’ asked she.

’Because there I can earn bread for my family.  Because I know no one there, and no one knows Helstone, or can ever talk to me about it.’

’Bread for your family!  I thought you and mamma had’—­and then she stopped, checking her natural interest regarding their future life, as she saw the gathering gloom on her father’s brow.  But he, with his quick intuitive sympathy, read in her face, as in a mirror, the reflections of his own moody depression, and turned it off with an effort.

’You shall be told all, Margaret.  Only help me to tell your mother.  I think I could do anything but that:  the idea of her distress turns me sick with dread.  If I tell you all, perhaps you could break it to her to-morrow.  I am going out for the day, to bid Farmer Dobson and the poor people on Bracy Common good-bye.  Would you dislike breaking it to her very much, Margaret?’ Margaret did dislike it, did shrink from it more than from anything she had ever had to do in her life before.  She could not speak, all at once.  Her father said, ’You dislike it very much, don’t you, Margaret?’ Then she conquered herself, and said, with a bright strong look on her face: 

’It is a painful thing, but it must be done, and I will do it as well as ever I can.  You must have many painful things to do.’