‘I recollect.  I hadn’t heard of it before.’

’And I thought—­I always thought that papa had told you about it.’

‘No! he never did.  But what about it, Margaret?’

’I want to tell you of something I did that was very wrong, about that time,’ said Margaret, suddenly looking up at him with her clear honest eyes.  ‘I told a lie;’ and her face became scarlet.

’True, that was bad I own; not but what I have told a pretty round number in my life, not all in downright words, as I suppose you did, but in actions, or in some shabby circumlocutory way, leading people either to disbelieve the truth, or believe a falsehood.  You know who is the father of lies, Margaret?  Well! a great number of folk, thinking themselves very good, have odd sorts of connexion with lies, left-hand marriages, and second cousins-once-removed.  The tainting blood of falsehood runs through us all.  I should have guessed you as far from it as most people.  What! crying, child?  Nay, now we’ll not talk of it, if it ends in this way.  I dare say you have been sorry for it, and that you won’t do it again, and it’s long ago now, and in short I want you to be very cheerful, and not very sad, this evening.’

Margaret wiped her eyes, and tried to talk about something else, but suddenly she burst out afresh.

’Please, Mr. Bell, let me tell you about it—­you could perhaps help me a little; no, not help me, but if you knew the truth, perhaps you could put me to rights—­that is not it, after all,’ said she, in despair at not being able to express herself more exactly as she wished.

Mr. Bell’s whole manner changed.  ‘Tell me all about it, child,’ said he.

’It’s a long story; but when Fred came, mamma was very ill, and I was undone with anxiety, and afraid, too, that I might have drawn him into danger; and we had an alarm just after her death, for Dixon met some one in Milton—­a man called Leonards—­who had known Fred, and who seemed to owe him a grudge, or at any rate to be tempted by the recollection of the reward offered for hisapprehension; and with this new fright, I thought I had better hurry off Fred to London, where, as you would understand from what we said the other night, he was to go to consult Mr. Lennox as to his chances if he stood the trial.  So we—­that is, he and I,—­went to the railway station; it was one evening, and it was just getting rather dusk, but still light enough to recognise and be recognised, and we were too early, and went out to walk in a field just close by; I was always in a panic about this Leonards, who was, I knew, somewhere in the neighbourhood; and then, when we were in the field, the low red sunlight just in my face, some one came by on horseback in the road just below the field-style by which we stood.  I saw him look at me, but I did not know who it was at first, the sun was so in my eyes, but in an instant the dazzle went off, and I saw it was Mr. Thornton, and we bowed,’——­