He could not attend to all the lawyer’s details, which, as he saw, made Margaret’s eyes dilate, and her lips grow pale, as one by one fate decreed, or so it seemed, every morsel of evidence which would exonerate Frederick, should fall from beneath her feet and disappear.  Even Mr. Lennox’s well-regulated professional voice took a softer, tenderer tone, as he drew near to the extinction of the last hope.  It was not that Margaret had not been perfectly aware of the result before.  It was only that the details of each successive disappointment came with such relentless minuteness to quench all hope, that she at last fairly gave way to tears.  Mr. Lennox stopped reading.

‘I had better not go on,’ said he, in a concerned voice.  ’It was a foolish proposal of mine.  Lieutenant Hale,’ and even this giving him the title of the service from which he had so harshly been expelled, was soothing to Margaret, ’Lieutenant Hale is happy now; more secure in fortune and future prospects than he could ever have been in the navy; and has, doubtless, adopted his wife’s country as his own.’

‘That is it,’ said Margaret.  ’It seems so selfish in me to regret it,’ trying to smile, ’and yet he is lost to me, and I am so lonely.’  Mr. Lennox turned over his papers, and wished that he were as rich and prosperous as he believed he should be some day.  Mr. Bell blew his nose, but, otherwise, he also kept silence; and Margaret, in a minute or two, had apparently recovered her usual composure.  She thanked Mr. Lennox very courteously for his trouble; all the more courteously and graciously because she was conscious that, by her behaviour, he might have probably been led to imagine that he had given her needless pain.  Yet it was pain she would not have been without.

Mr. Bell came up to wish her good-bye.

‘Margaret!’ said he, as he fumbled with his gloves.  ’I am going down to Helstone to-morrow, to look at the old place.  Would you like to come with me?  Or would it give you too much pain?  Speak out, don’t be afraid.’

‘Oh, Mr. Bell,’ said she—­and could say no more.  But she took his old gouty hand, and kissed it.

‘Come, come; that’s enough,’ said he, reddening with awkwardness.  ’I suppose your aunt Shaw will trust you with me.  We’ll go to-morrow morning, and we shall get there about two o’clock, I fancy.  We’ll take a snack, and order dinner at the little inn—­the Lennard Arms, it used to be,—­and go and get an appetite in the forest.  Can you stand it, Margaret?  It will be a trial, I know, to both of us, but it will be a pleasure to me, at least.  And there we’ll dine—­it will be but doe-venison, if we can get it at all—­and then I’ll take my nap while you go out and see old friends.  I’ll give you back safe and sound, barring railway accidents, and I’ll insure your life for a thousand pounds before starting, which may be some comfort to your relations; but otherwise, I’ll bring you back to Mrs. Shaw by lunch-time on Friday.  So, if you say yes, I’ll just go up-stairs and propose it.’