return from his day of fatigue and distress.  She dwelt upon what he must have borne in secret for long; her mother only replied coldly that he ought to have told her, and that then at any rate he would have had an adviser to give him counsel; and Margaret turned faint at heart when she heard her father’s step in the hall.  She dared not go to meet him, and tell him what she had done all day, for fear of her mother’s jealous annoyance.  She heard him linger, as if awaiting her, or some sign of her; and she dared not stir; she saw by her mother’s twitching lips, and changing colour, that she too was aware that her husband had returned.  Presently he opened the room-door, and stood there uncertain whether to come in.  His face was gray and pale; he had a timid, fearful look in his eyes; something almost pitiful to see in a man’s face; but that look of despondent uncertainty, of mental and bodily languor, touched his wife’s heart.  She went to him, and threw herself on his breast, crying out—­

‘Oh!  Richard, Richard, you should have told me sooner!’

And then, in tears, Margaret left her, as she rushed up-stairs to throw herself on her bed, and hide her face in the pillows to stifle the hysteric sobs that would force their way at last, after the rigid self-control of the whole day.  How long she lay thus she could not tell.  She heard no noise, though the housemaid came in to arrange the room.  The affrighted girl stole out again on tip-toe, and went and told Mrs. Dixon that Miss Hale was crying as if her heart would break:  she was sure she would make herself deadly ill if she went on at that rate.  In consequence of this, Margaret felt herself touched, and started up into a sitting posture; she saw the accustomed room, the figure of Dixon in shadow, as the latter stood holding the candle a little behind her, for fear of the effect on Miss Hale’s startled eyes, swollen and blinded as they were.

‘Oh, Dixon!  I did not hear you come into the room!’ said Margaret, resuming her trembling self-restraint.  ’Is it very late?’ continued she, lifting herself languidly off the bed, yet letting her feet touch the ground without fairly standing down, as she shaded her wet ruffled hair off her face, and tried to look as though nothing were the matter; as if she had only been asleep.

‘I hardly can tell what time it is,’ replied Dixon, in an aggrieved tone of voice.  ’Since your mamma told me this terrible news, when I dressed her for tea, I’ve lost all count of time.  I’m sure I don’t know what is to become of us all.  When Charlotte told me just now you were sobbing, Miss Hale, I thought, no wonder, poor thing!  And master thinking of turning Dissenter at his time of life, when, if it is not to be said he’s done well in the Church, he’s not done badly after all.  I had a cousin, miss, who turned Methodist preacher after he was fifty years of age, and a tailor all his life; but then he had never been able to make a pair of trousers to fit, for as long as he had been in the trade, so it was no wonder; but for master! as I said to missus, “What would poor Sir John have said? he never liked your marrying Mr. Hale, but if he could have known it would have come to this, he would have sworn worse oaths than ever, if that was possible!"’