’I too, am sorry, my dear.  Mr. Bell quite startled me when he said, some idea of the kind—­’

‘Mr. Bell!  Oh, did Mr. Bell see it?’

’A little; but he took it into his head that you—­how shall I say it?—­that you were not ungraciously disposed towards Mr. Thornton.  I knew that could never be.  I hoped the whole thing was but an imagination; but I knew too well what your real feelings were to suppose that you could ever like Mr. Thornton in that way.  But I am very sorry.’

They were very quiet and still for some minutes.  But, on stroking her cheek in a caressing way soon after, he was almost shocked to find her face wet with tears.  As he touched her, she sprang up, and smiling with forced brightness, began to talk of the Lennoxes with such a vehement desire to turn the conversation, that Mr. Hale was too tender-hearted to try to force it back into the old channel.

’To-morrow—­yes, to-morrow they will be back in Harley Street.  Oh, how strange it will be!  I wonder what room they will make into the nursery?  Aunt Shaw will be happy with the baby.  Fancy Edith a mamma!  And Captain Lennox—­I wonder what he will do with himself now he has sold out!’

‘I’ll tell you what,’ said her father, anxious to indulge her in this fresh subject of interest, ’I think I must spare you for a fortnight just to run up to town and see the travellers.  You could learn more, by half an hour’s conversation with Mr. Henry Lennox, about Frederick’s chances, than in a dozen of these letters of his; so it would, in fact, be uniting business with pleasure.’

’No, papa, you cannot spare me, and what’s more, I won’t be spared.’  Then after a pause, she added:  ’I am losing hope sadly about Frederick; he is letting us down gently, but I can see that Mr. Lennox himself has no hope of hunting up the witnesses under years and years of time.  No,’ said she, ’that bubble was very pretty, and very dear to our hearts; but it has burst like many another; and we must console ourselves with being glad that Frederick is so happy, and with being a great deal to each other.  So don’t offend me by talking of being able to spare me, papa, for I assure you you can’t.’

But the idea of a change took root and germinated in Margaret’s heart, although not in the way in which her father proposed it at first.  She began to consider how desirable something of the kind would be to her father, whose spirits, always feeble, now became too frequently depressed, and whose health, though he never complained, had been seriously affected by his wife’s illness and death.  There were the regular hours of reading with his pupils, but that all giving and no receiving could no longer be called companion-ship, as in the old days when Mr. Thornton came to study under him.  Margaret was conscious of the want under which he was suffering, unknown to himself; the want of a man’s intercourse with men.  At Helstone there had been perpetual