North and South
Page 219Late in the evening, the expected book arrived, 'with Mr.
Thornton's kind regards, and wishes to know how Mr. Hale is.' 'Say that I am much better, Dixon, but that Miss Hale--' 'No, papa,' said Margaret, eagerly--'don't say anything about me.
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.