His self-satisfaction lasted him till he was fairly out in the streets, walking side by side with Henry Lennox.  Here he suddenly remembered Margaret’s little look of entreaty as she urged him to stay longer, and he also recollected a few hints given him long ago by an acquaintance of Mr. Lennox’s, as to his admiration of Margaret.  It gave a new direction to his thoughts.  ’You have known Miss Hale for a long time, I believe.  How do you think her looking?  She strikes me as pale and ill.’

’I thought her looking remarkably well.  Perhaps not when I first came in—­now I think of it.  But certainly, when she grew animated, she looked as well as ever I saw her do.’

‘She has had a great deal to go through,’ said Mr. Bell.

’Yes!  I have been sorry to hear of all she has had to bear; not merely the common and universal sorrow arising from death, but all the annoyance which her father’s conduct must have caused her, and then——­’

‘Her father’s conduct!’ said Mr. Bell, in an accent of surprise.’You must have heard some wrong statement.  He behaved in the most conscientious manner.  He showed more resolute strength than I should ever have given him credit for formerly.’

’Perhaps I have been wrongly informed.  But I have been told, by his successor in the living—­a clever, sensible man, and a thoroughly active clergyman—­that there was no call upon Mr. Hale to do what he did, relinquish the living, and throw himself and his family on the tender mercies of private teaching in a manufacturing town; the bishop had offered him another living, it is true, but if he had come to entertain certain doubts, he could have remained where he was, and so had no occasion to resign.  But the truth is, these country clergymen live such isolated lives—­isolated, I mean, from all intercourse with men of equal cultivation with themselves, by whose minds they might regulate their own, and discover when they were going either too fast or too slow—­that they are very apt to disturb themselves with imaginary doubts as to the articles of faith, and throw up certain opportunities of doing good for very uncertain fancies of their own.’

’I differ from you.  I do not think they are very apt to do as my poor friend Hale did.’  Mr. Bell was inwardly chafing.

’Perhaps I used too general an expression, in saying “very apt.”  But certainly, their lives are such as very often to produce either inordinate self-sufficiency, or a morbid state of conscience,’ replied Mr. Lennox with perfect coolness.

’You don’t meet with any self-sufficiency among the lawyers, for instance?’ asked Mr. Bell.  ’And seldom, I imagine, any cases of morbid conscience.’  He was becoming more and more vexed, and forgetting his lately-caught trick of good manners.  Mr. Lennox saw now that he had annoyed his companion; and as he had talked pretty much for the sake of saying something, and so passing the time while their road lay together, he