She used to sit long hours upon the beach, gazing intently on the waves as they chafed with perpetual motion against the pebbly shore,—­or she looked out upon the more distant heave, and sparkle against the sky, and heard, without being conscious of hearing, the eternal psalm, which went up continually.  She was soothed without knowing how or why.  Listlessly she sat there, on the ground, her hands clasped round her knees, while her aunt Shaw did small shoppings, and Edith and Captain Lennox rode far and wide on shore and inland.  The nurses, sauntering on with their charges, would pass and repass her, and wonder in whispers what she could find to look at so long, day after day.  And when the family gathered at dinner-time, Margaret was so silent and absorbed that Edith voted her moped, and hailed a proposal of her husband’s with great satisfaction, that Mr. Henry Lennox should be asked to take Cromer for a week, on his return from Scotland in October.

But all this time for thought enabled Margaret to put events in their right places, as to origin and significance, both as regarded her past life and her future.  Those hours by the sea-side were not lost, as any one might have seen who had had the perception to read, or the care to understand, the look that Margaret’s face was gradually acquiring.  Mr. Henry Lennox was excessively struck by the change.

’The sea has done Miss Hale an immense deal of good, I should fancy,’ said he, when she first left the room after his arrival in their family circle.  ’She looks ten years younger than she did in Harley Street.’

‘That’s the bonnet I got her!’ said Edith, triumphantly.  ’I knew it would suit her the moment I saw it.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Mr. Lennox, in the half-contemptuous, half-indulgent tone he generally used to Edith.  ’But I believe I know the difference between the charms of a dress and the charms of a woman.  No mere bonnet would have made Miss Hale’s eyes so lustrous and yet so soft, or her lips so ripe and red—­and her face altogether so full of peace and light.—­She is like, and yet more,’—­he dropped his voice,—­’like the Margaret Hale of Helstone.’

From this time the clever and ambitious man bent all his powers to gaining Margaret.  He loved her sweet beauty.  He saw the latent sweep of her mind, which could easily (he thought) be led to embrace all the objects on which he had set his heart.  He looked upon her fortune only as a part of the complete and superb character of herself and her position:  yet he was fully aware of the rise which it would immediately enable him, the poor barrister, to take.  Eventually he would earn such success, and such honours, as would enable him to pay her back, with interest, that first advance in wealth which he should owe to her.  He had been to Milton on business connected with her property, on his return from Scotland; and with the quick eye of a skilled lawyer, ready ever to take in and weigh contingencies, he had seen that