But I

Lennox

said rather gravely: "Thank you, papa. don't want to go. We will hope that Mr. will manage so well, that Frederick may bring Dolores to see us when they are married. And as for Edith, the regiment won't remain much longer in Corfu. Perhaps we shall see both of them here before another year is out."

Mr. Hale's cheerful subjects had come to an end. Some painful recollection had stolen across his mind, and driven him into silence. By and by Margaret said:

"Papa-did you see Nicholas Higgins at the funeral? He was there, and Mary too. Poor fellow! it was his way of showing sympathy. He has a good warm heart under his bluff abrupt ways." “I am sure of it,” replied Mr. Hale. "I saw it all along, even while you tried to persuade me that he was all sorts of bad things. We will go and see them to-morrow, if you are strong enough to walk so far."

We did not pay

66 Oh yes. I want to see them. Mary-or rather she refused to take it, Dixon says. We will go so as to catch him just after his dinner, and before he goes to his work."

Towards evening Mr. Hale said:

"I half expected Mr. Thornton would have called. He spoke of a book yesterday which he had, and which I wanted to see. He said he would try and bring it to-day."

Margaret sighed.

She knew he would not come. He would be too delicate to run the chance of meeting her, while her shame must be so fresh in his memory. The very mention of his name renewed

VOL. II.

K

her trouble, and produced a relapse into the feeling of depressed, pre-occupied exhaustion. She gave

way to listless languor. Suddenly it struck her that this was a strange manner to show her patience, or to reward her father for his watchful care of her all through the day. She sate up, and offered to read aloud. His eyes were failing, and he gladly accepted her proposal. She read well: she gave the due emphasis; but had any one asked her, when she had ended, the meaning of what she had been reading, she could not have told. She was smitten with a feeling of ingratitude to Mr. Thornton, inasmuch as, in the morning, she had refused to accept the kindness he had shown her in making further inquiry from the medical men, so as to obviate any inquest being held. Oh! she was grateful! She had been cowardly and false, and had shown her cowardliness and falsehood in action that could not be recalled; but she was not ungrateful. It sent a glow to her heart, to know how she could feel towards one who had reason to despise her. His cause for contempt was so just, that she should have respected him less if she had thought he did not feel contempt. It was a pleasure to feel how thoroughly she respected him. He could not prevent her doing that; it was the one comfort in all this misery.

Late in the evening, the expected book arrived, "with Mr. Thornton's kind regards, and wishes to know how Mr. Hale is."

66

Say that I am much better, Dixon, but that Miss Hale-"

"No, papa," said anything about me.

Margaret, eagerly-" don't say
He does not ask."

"My dear child, how you are shivering!" said her father, a few minutes afterwards. "You must go to bed directly. You have turned quite pale ! "

Margaret did not refuse to go, though she was loth to leave her father alone. She needed the relief of solitude after a day of busy thinking, and busier repenting.

But she seemed much as usual the next day; the lingering gravity and sadness, and the occasional absence of mind, were not unnatural symptoms in the early days of grief. And almost in proportion to her re-establishment in health, was her father's relapse into his abstracted musing upon the wife he had lost, and the past era in his life that was closed to him for ever.

CHAPTER XI.

UNION NOT ALWAYS STRENGTH.

"The steps of the bearers, heavy and slow,
The sobs of the mourners, deep and low

SHELLEY.

AT the time arranged the previous day, they set out on their walk to see Nicholas Higgins and his daughter. They both were reminded of their recent loss, by a strange kind of shyness in their new habiliments, and in the fact that it was the first time, for many weeks, that they had deliberately gone out together. They drew very close to each other in unspoken sympathy.

Nicholas was sitting by the fire-side in his accustomed corner: but he had not his accustomed pipe. He was leaning his head upon his hand, his arm resting on his knee. He did not get up when he saw them, though Margaret could read the welcome in his eye.

"Sit ye down, sit ye down. Fire's welly out," said he, giving it a vigorous poke, as if to turn attention away from himself. He was rather disorderly, to be sure, with a black unshaven beard of several days' growth, making his pale face look yet paler,

and a jacket which would have been all the better for patching.

"We thought we should have a good chance of finding you, just after dinner-time," said Margaret. “We have had our sorrow too, since we saw you," said Mr. Hale.

"Ay, ay. Sorrows is more plentiful than dinners just now; I reckon, my dinner hour stretches all o'er the day; yo're pretty sure of finding me."

"Are you out of work?" asked Margaret.

66

'Ay," he replied shortly. Then, after a moment's silence, he added, looking up for the first time: "I'm not wanting brass. Dunno yo' think it. Bess, poor lass, had a little stock under her pillow, ready to slip into my hand, last moment, and Mary is fustiancutting. But I'm out o' work a' the same.”

"We owe Mary some money," said Mr. Hale, before Margaret's sharp pressure on his arm could arrest the words.

"If hoo takes it, I'll turn her out o' doors. I'll bide inside these four walls, and she'll bide out. That's a'."

"But we owe her many thanks for her kind service,” began Mr. Hale again.

"I ne'er thanked yo'r daughter theer for her deeds o' love to my poor wench. I ne'er could find th' words. I'se have to begin and try now, if yo' start making an ado about what little Mary could sarve yo'."

"Is it because of the strike you're out of work?" asked Margaret gently.

"Strike's ended. It's o'er for this time. I'm out o' work because I ne'er asked for it. And I ne'er