and it was impossible but that the recollection of the day of the riot should force itself into both their minds.  Into his it came associated with the speeches of the following day; her passionate declaration that there was not a man in all that violent and desperate crowd, for whom she did not care as much as for him.  And at the remembrance of her taunting words, his brow grew stern, though his heart beat thick with longing love.  ‘No!’ said he, ’I put it to the touch once, and I lost it all.  Let her go,—­with her stony heart, and her beauty;—­how set and terrible her look is now, for all her loveliness of feature!  She is afraid I shall speak what will require some stern repression.  Let her go.  Beauty and heiress as she may be, she will find it hard to meet with a truer heart than mine.  Let her go!’

And there was no tone of regret, or emotion of any kind in the voice with which he said good-bye; and the offered hand was taken with a resolute calmness, and dropped as carelessly as if it had been a dead and withered flower.  But none in his household saw Mr. Thornton again that day.  He was busily engaged; or so he said.

Margaret’s strength was so utterly exhausted by these visits, that she had to submit to much watching, and petting, and sighing ‘I-told-you-so’s,’ from her aunt.  Dixon said she was quite as bad as she had been on the first day she heard of her father’s death; and she and Mrs. Shaw consulted as to the desirableness of delaying the morrow’s journey.  But when her aunt reluctantly proposed a few days’ delay to Margaret, the latter writhed her body as if in acute suffering, and said: 

’Oh! let us go.  I cannot be patient here.  I shall not get well here.  I want to forget.’

So the arrangements went on; and Captain Lennox came, and with him news of Edith and the little boy; and Margaret found that the indifferent, careless conversation of one who, however kind, was not too warm and anxious a sympathiser, did her good.  She roused up; and by the time that she knew she might expect Higgins, she was able to leave the room quietly, and await in her own chamber the expected summons.

‘Eh!’ said he, as she came in, ‘to think of th’ oud gentleman dropping off as he did!  Yo’ might ha’ knocked me down wi’ a straw when they telled me.  “Mr. Hale?” said I; “him as was th’ parson?” “Ay,” said they.  “Then,” said I, “there’s as good a man gone as ever lived on this earth, let who will be t’ other!” And I came to see yo’, and tell yo’ how grieved I were, but them women in th’ kitchen wouldn’t tell yo’ I were there.  They said yo’ were ill,—­and butter me, but yo’ dunnot look like th’ same wench.  And yo’re going to be a grand lady up i’ Lunnon, aren’t yo’?’

‘Not a grand lady,’ said Margaret, half smiling.