been very endurable—­small, keen, bright little spots of positive enjoyment having come sparkling into the very middle of sorrows.  A year ago, or when she first went to Helstone, and first became silently conscious of the querulousness in her mother’s temper, she would have groaned bitterly over the idea of a long illness to be borne in a strange, desolate, noisy, busy place, with diminished comforts on every side of the home life.  But with the increase of serious and just ground of complaint, a new kind of patience had sprung up in her mother’s mind.  She was gentle and quiet in intense bodily suffering, almost in proportion as she had been restless and depressed when there had been no real cause for grief.  Mr. Hale was in exactly that stage of apprehension which, in men of his stamp, takes the shape of wilful blindness.  He was more irritated than Margaret had ever known him at his daughter’s expressed anxiety.

’Indeed, Margaret, you are growing fanciful!  God knows I should be the first to take the alarm if your mother were really ill; we always saw when she had her headaches at Helstone, even without her telling us.  She looks quite pale and white when she is ill; and now she has a bright healthy colour in her cheeks, just as she used to have when I first knew her.’

‘But, papa,’ said Margaret, with hesitation, ’do you know, I think that is the flush of pain.’

’Nonsense, Margaret.  I tell you, you are too fanciful.  You are the person not well, I think.  Send for the doctor to-morrow for yourself; and then, if it will make your mind easier, he can see your mother.’

‘Thank you, dear papa.  It will make me happier, indeed.’  And she went up to him to kiss him.  But he pushed her away—­gently enough, but still as if she had suggested unpleasant ideas, which he should be glad to get rid of as readily as he could of her presence.  He walked uneasily up and down the room.

‘Poor Maria!’ said he, half soliloquising, ’I wish one could do right without sacrificing others.  I shall hate this town, and myself too, if she——­Pray, Margaret, does your mother often talk to you of the old places of Helstone, I mean?’

‘No, papa,’ said Margaret, sadly.

’Then, you see, she can’t be fretting after them, eh?  It has always been a comfort to me to think that your mother was so simple and open that I knew every little grievance she had.  She never would conceal anything seriously affecting her health from me:  would she, eh, Margaret?  I am quite sure she would not.  So don’t let me hear of these foolish morbid ideas.  Come, give me a kiss, and run off to bed.’

But she heard him pacing about (racooning, as she and Edith used to call it) long after her slow and languid undressing was finished—­long after she began to listen as she lay in bed.

CHAPTER XIV

THE MUTINY

’I was used
To sleep at nights as sweetly as a child,—­
Now if the wind blew rough, it made me start,
And think of my poor boy tossing about
Upon the roaring seas.  And then I seemed
To feel that it was hard to take him from me
For such a little fault.’ 
Southey.