'Truth will fail thee never, never!

Though thy bark be tempest-driven,

Though each plank be rent and riven,

Truth will bear thee on for ever!'

ANON.

The 'bearing up better than likely' was a terrible strain upon

Margaret. Sometimes she thought she must give way, and cry out

with pain, as the sudden sharp thought came across her, even

during her apparently cheerful conversations with her father,

that she had no longer a mother. About Frederick, too, there was

great uneasiness. The Sunday post intervened, and interfered with

their London letters; and on Tuesday Margaret was surprised and

disheartened to find that there was still no letter. She was

quite in the dark as to his plans, and her father was miserable

at all this uncertainty. It broke in upon his lately acquired

habit of sitting still in one easy chair for half a day together.

He kept pacing up and down the room; then out of it; and she

heard him upon the landing opening and shutting the bed-room

doors, without any apparent object. She tried to tranquillise him

by reading aloud; but it was evident he could not listen for long

together. How thankful she was then, that she had kept to herself

the additional cause for anxiety produced by their encounter with

Leonards. She was thankful to hear Mr. Thornton announced. His

visit would force her father's thoughts into another channel.

He came up straight to her father, whose hands he took and wrung

without a word--holding them in his for a minute or two, during

which time his face, his eyes, his look, told of more sympathy

than could be put into words. Then he turned to Margaret. Not

'better than likely' did she look. Her stately beauty was dimmed

with much watching and with many tears. The expression on her

countenance was of gentle patient sadness--nay of positive

present suffering. He had not meant to greet her otherwise than

with his late studied coldness of demeanour; but he could not

help going up to her, as she stood a little aside, rendered timid

by the uncertainty of his manner of late, and saying the few

necessary common-place words in so tender a voice, that her eyes

filled with tears, and she turned away to hide her emotion. She

took her work and sate down very quiet and silent. Mr. Thornton's

heart beat quick and strong, and for the time he utterly forgot

the Outwood lane. He tried to talk to Mr. Hale: and--his presence

always a certain kind of pleasure to Mr. Hale, as his power and

decision made him, and his opinions, a safe, sure port--was

unusually agreeable to her father, as Margaret saw.




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