‘Then proudly, proudly up she rose,

Tho’ the tear was in her e’e,

“Whate’er ye say, think what ye may,

Ye’s get na word frae me!”’

SCOTCH BALLAD.

It was not merely that Margaret was known to Mr. Thornton to have spoken falsely — though she imagined that for this reason only was she so turned in his opinion — but that this falsehood of hers bore a distinct reference in his mind to some other lover. He could not forget the fond and earnest look that had passed between her and some other man — the attitude of familiar confidence, if not of positive endearment. The thought of this perpetually stung him; it was a picture before his eyes, wherever he went and whatever he was doing. In addition to this (and he ground his teeth as he remembered it), was the hour, dusky twilight; the place, so far away from home, and comparatively unfrequented. His nobler self had said at first, that all this last might be accidental, innocent, justifiable; but once allow her right to love and be beloved (and had he any reason to deny her right? — had not her words been severely explicit when she cast his love away from her?), she might easily have been beguiled into a longer walk, on to a later hour than she had anticipated. But that falsehood! which showed a fatal consciousness of something wrong, and to be concealed, which was unlike her. He did her that justice, though all the time it would have been a relief to believe her utterly unworthy of his esteem. It was this that made the misery — that he passionately loved her, and thought her, even with all her faults, more lovely and more excellent than any other woman; yet he deemed her so attached to some other man, so led away by her affection for him as to violate her truthful nature. The very falsehood that stained her, was a proof how blindly she loved another — this dark, slight, elegant, handsome man — while he himself was rough, and stern, and strongly made. He lashed himself into an agony of fierce jealousy. He thought of that look, that attitude! — how he would have laid his life at her feet for such tender glances, such fond detention! He mocked at himself, for having valued the mechanical way in which she had protected him from the fury of the mob; now he had seen how soft and bewitching she looked when with a man she really loved. He remembered, point by point, the sharpness of her words —‘There was not a man in all that crowd for whom she would not have done as much, far more readily than for him.’ He shared with the mob, in her desire of averting bloodshed from them; but this man, this hidden lover, shared with nobody; he had looks, words, hand-cleavings, lies, concealment, all to himself.

Mr. Thornton was conscious that he had never been so irritable as he was now, in all his life long; he felt inclined to give a short abrupt answer, more like a bark than a speech, to every one that asked him a question; and this consciousness hurt his pride he had always piqued himself on his self-control, and control himself he would. So the manner was subdued to a quiet deliberation, but the matter was even harder and sterner than common. He was more than usually silent at home; employing his evenings in a continual pace backwards and forwards, which would have annoyed his mother exceedingly if it had been practised by any one else; and did not tend to promote any forbearance on her part even to this beloved son.

‘Can you stop — can you sit down for a moment? I have something to say to you, if you would give up that everlasting walk, walk, walk.’

He sat down instantly, on a chair against the wall.

‘I want to speak to you about Betsy. She says she must leave us; that her lover’s death has so affected her spirits she can’t give her heart to her work.’

‘Very well. I suppose other cooks are to be met with.’

‘That’s so like a man. It’s not merely the cooking, it is that she knows all the ways of the house. Besides, she tells me something about your friend Miss Hale.’

‘Miss Hale is no friend of mine. Mr. Hale is my friend.’

‘I am glad to hear you say so, for if she had been your friend, what Betsy says would have annoyed you.’

‘Let me hear it,’ said he, with the extreme quietness of manner he had been assuming for the last few days.

‘Betsy says, that the night on which her lover — I forget his name — for she always calls him “he”——’

‘Leonards.’

‘The night on which Leonards was last seen at the station — when he was last seen on duty, in fact — Miss Hale was there, walking about with a young man who, Betsy believes, killed Leonards by some blow or push.’

‘Leonards was not killed by any blow or push.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I distinctly put the question to the surgeon of the Infirmary. He told me there was an internal disease of long standing, caused by Leonards’ habit of drinking to excess; that the fact of his becoming rapidly worse while in a state of intoxication, settled the question as to whether the last fatal attack was caused by excess of drinking, or the fall.’

‘The fall! What fall?’

‘Caused by the blow or push of which Betsy speaks.’

‘Then there was a blow or push?’

‘I believe so.’

‘And who did it?’

‘As there was no inquest, in consequence of the doctor’s opinion, I cannot tell you.’

‘But Miss Hale was there?’

No answer.

‘And with a young man?’

Still no answer. At last he said: ‘I tell you, mother, that there was no inquest — no inquiry. No judicial inquiry, I mean.’

‘Betsy says that Woolmer (some man she knows, who is in a grocer’s shop out at Crampton) can swear that Miss Hale was at the station at that hour, walking backwards and forwards with a young man.’

‘I don’t see what we have to do with that. Miss Hale is at liberty to please herself.’

‘I’m glad to hear you say so,’ said Mrs. Thornton, eagerly. ‘It certainly signifies very little to us — not at all to you, after what has passed! but I— I made a promise to Mrs. Hale, that I would not allow her daughter to go wrong without advising and remonstrating with her. I shall certainly let her know my opinion of such conduct.’

‘I do not see any harm in what she did that evening,’ said Mr. Thornton, getting up, and coming near to his mother; he stood by the chimney-piece with his face turned away from the room.

‘You would not have approved of Fanny’s being seen out, after dark, in rather a lonely place, walking about with a young man. I say nothing of the taste which could choose the time, when her mother lay unburied, for such a promenade. Should you have liked your sister to have been noticed by a grocer’s assistant for doing so?’

‘In the first place, as it is not many years since I myself was a draper’s assistant, the mere circumstance of a grocer’s assistant noticing any act does not alter the character of the act to me. And in the next place, I see a great deal of difference between Miss Hale and Fanny. I can imagine that the one may have weighty reasons, which may and ought to make her overlook any seeming Impropriety in her conduct. I never knew Fanny have weighty reasons for anything. Other people must guard her. I believe Miss Hale is a guardian to herself.’

‘A pretty character of your sister, indeed! Really, John, one would have thought Miss Hale had done enough to make you clear-sighted. She drew you on to an offer, by a bold display of pretended regard for you — to play you off against this very young man, I’ve no doubt. Her whole conduct is clear to me now. You believe he is her lover, I suppose — you agree to that.’

He turned round to his mother; his face was very gray and grim. ‘Yes, mother. I do believe he is her lover.’ When he had spoken, he turned round again; he writhed himself about, like one in bodily pain. He leant his face against his hand. Then before she could speak, he turned sharp again:

‘Mother. He is her lover, whoever he is; but she may need help and womanly counsel; — there may be difficulties or temptations which I don’t know. I fear there are. I don’t want to know what they are; but as you have ever been a good — ay! and a tender mother to me, go to her, and gain her confidence, and tell her what is best to be done. I know that something is wrong; some dread, must be a terrible torture to her.’

‘For God’s sake, John!’ said his mother, now really shocked, ‘what do you mean? What do you mean? What do you know?’

He did not reply to her.

‘John! I don’t know what I shan’t think unless you speak. You have no right to say what you have done against her.’

‘Not against her, mother! I could not speak against her.’

‘Well! you have no right to say what you have done, unless you say more. These half-expressions are what ruin a woman’s character.’

‘Her character! Mother, you do not dare —’ he faced about, and looked into her face with his flaming eyes. Then, drawing himself up into determined composure and dignity, he said, ‘I will not say any more than this, which is neither more nor less than the simple truth, and I am sure you believe me — I have good reason to believe, that Miss Hale is in some strait and difficulty connected with an attachment which, of itself, from my knowledge of Miss Hale’s character, is perfectly innocent and right. What my reason is, I refuse to tell. But never let me hear any one say a word against her, implying any more serious imputation than that she now needs the counsel of some kind and gentle woman. You promised Mrs. Hale to be that woman!’

No!’ said Mrs. Thornton. ‘I am happy to say, I did not promise kindness and gentleness, for I felt at the time that it might be out of my power to render these to one of Miss Hale’s character and disposition. I promised counsel and advice, such as I would give to my own daughter; I shall speak to her as I would do to Fanny, if she had gone gallivanting with a young man in the dusk. I shall speak with relation to the circumstances I know, without being influenced either one way or another by the “strong reasons” which you will not confide to me. Then I shall have fulfilled my promise, and done my duty.’

‘She will never bear it,’ said he passionately.

‘She will have to bear it, if I speak in her dead mother’s name.’

‘Well!’ said he, breaking away, ‘don’t tell me any more about it. I cannot endure to think of it. It will be better that you should speak to her any way, than that she should not be spoken to at all. — Oh! that look of love!’ continued he, between his teeth, as he bolted himself into his own private room. ‘And that cursed lie; which showed some terrible shame in the background, to be kept from the light in which I thought she lived perpetually! Oh, Margaret, Margaret! Mother, how you have tortured me! Oh! Margaret, could you not have loved me? I am but uncouth and hard, but I would never have led you into any falsehood for me.’

The more Mrs. Thornton thought over what her son had said, in pleading for a merciful judgment for Margaret’s indiscretion, the more bitterly she felt inclined towards her. She took a savage pleasure in the idea of ‘speaking her mind’ to her, in the guise of fulfilment of a duty. She enjoyed the thought of showing herself untouched by the ‘glamour,’ which she was well aware Margaret had the power of throwing over many people. She snorted scornfully over the picture of the beauty of her victim; her jet black hair, her clear smooth skin, her lucid eyes would not help to save her one word of the just and stern reproach which Mrs. Thornton spent half the night in preparing to her mind.

‘Is Miss Hale within?’ She knew she was, for she had seen her at the window, and she had her feet inside the little hall before Martha had half answered her question.

Margaret was sitting alone, writing to Edith, and giving her many particulars of her mother’s last days. It was a softening employment, and she had to brush away the unbidden tears as Mrs. Thornton was announced.

She was so gentle and ladylike in her mode of reception that her visitor was somewhat daunted; and it became impossible to utter the speech, so easy of arrangement with no one to address it to. Margaret’s low rich voice was softer than usual; her manner more gracious, because in her heart she was feeling very grateful to Mrs. Thornton for the courteous attention of her call. She exerted herself to find subjects of interest for conversation; praised Martha, the servant whom Mrs. Thornton had found for them; had asked Edith for a little Greek air, about which she had spoken to Miss Thornton. Mrs. Thornton was fairly discomfited. Her sharp Damascus blade seemed out of place, and useless among rose-leaves. She was silent, because she was trying to task herself up to her duty At last, she stung herself into its performance by a suspicion which, in spite of all probability, she allowed to cross her mind, that all this sweetness was put on with a view of propitiating Mr. Thornton; that, somehow, the other attachment had fallen through, and that it suited Miss Hale’s purpose to recall her rejected lover. Poor Margaret! there was perhaps so much truth in the suspicion as this: that Mrs. Thornton was the mother of one whose regard she valued, and feared to have lost; and this thought unconsciously added to her natural desire of pleasing one who was showing her kindness by her visit. Mrs. Thornton stood up to go, but yet she seemed to have something more to say. She cleared her throat and began:

‘Miss Hale, I have a duty to perform. I promised your poor mother that, as far as my poor judgment went, I would not allow you to act in any way wrongly, or (she softened her speech down a little here) inadvertently, without remonstrating; at least, without offering advice, whether you took it or not.’

Margaret stood before her, blushing like any culprit, with her eyes dilating as she gazed at Mrs. Thornton. She thought she had come to speak to her about the falsehood she had told — that Mr. Thornton had employed her to explain the danger she had exposed herself to, of being confuted in full court! and although her heart sank to think he had not rather chosen to come himself, and upbraid her, and receive her penitence, and restore her again to his good opinion, yet she was too much humbled not to bear any blame on this subject patiently and meekly.

Mrs. Thornton went on:

‘At first, when I heard from one of my servants, that you had been seen walking about with a gentleman, so far from home as the Outwood station, at such a time of the evening, I could hardly believe it. But............