They went through the well-known streets, past houses which they had often visited, past shops in which she had lounged, impatient, by her aunt’s side, while that lady was making some important and interminable decision-nay, absolutely past acquaintances in the streets; for though the morning had been of an incalculable length to them, and they felt as if it ought long ago to have closed in for the repose of darkness, it was the very busiest time of a London afternoon in November when they arrived there.  It was long since Mrs. Hale had been in London; and she roused up, almost like a child, to look about her at the different streets, and to gaze after and exclaim at the shops and carriages.

’Oh, there’s Harrison’s, where I bought so many of my wedding-things.  Dear! how altered!  They’ve got immense plate-glass windows, larger than Crawford’s in Southampton.  Oh, and there, I declare—­no, it is not—­yes, it is—­Margaret, we have just passed Mr. Henry Lennox.  Where can he be going, among all these shops?’

Margaret started forwards, and as quickly fell back, half-smiling at herself for the sudden motion.  They were a hundred yards away by this time; but he seemed like a relic of Helstone—­he was associated with a bright morning, an eventful day, and she should have liked to have seen him, without his seeing her,—­without the chance of their speaking.

The evening, without employment, passed in a room high up in an hotel, was long and heavy.  Mr. Hale went out to his bookseller’s, and to call on a friend or two.  Every one they saw, either in the house or out in the streets, appeared hurrying to some appointment, expected by, or expecting somebody.  They alone seemed strange and friendless, and desolate.  Yet within a mile, Margaret knew of house after house, where she for her own sake, and her mother for her aunt Shaw’s, would be welcomed, if they came in gladness, or even in peace of mind.  If they came sorrowing, and wanting sympathy in a complicated trouble like the present, then they would be felt as a shadow in all these houses of intimate acquaintances, not friends.  London life is too whirling and full to admit of even an hour of that deep silence of feeling which the friends of Job showed, when ’they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him; for they saw that his grief was very great.’

CHAPTER VII

NEW SCENES AND FACES

’Mist clogs the sunshine,
Smoky dwarf houses
Have we round on every side.’ 
Matthew Arnold.