'John,' said his mother, 'this lady is Mrs. Shaw, Miss Hale's
aunt. I am sorry to say, that Miss Hale's call is to wish us
good-bye.' 'You are going then!' said he, in a low voice.
'Yes,' said Margaret. 'We leave to-morrow.' 'My son-in-law comes this evening to escort us,' said Mrs. Shaw.
Mr. Thornton turned away. He had not sat down, and now he seemed
to be examining something on the table, almost as if he had
discovered an unopened letter, which had made him forget the
present company. He did not even seem to be aware when they got
up to take leave. He started forwards, however, to hand Mrs. Shaw
down to the carriage. As it drove up, he and Margaret stood close
together on the door-step, and it was impossible but that the
recollection of the day of the riot should force itself into both
their minds. Into his it came associated with the speeches of the
following day; her passionate declaration that there was not a
man in all that violent and desperate crowd, for whom she did not
care as much as for him. And at the remembrance of her taunting
words, his brow grew stern, though his heart beat thick with
longing love. 'No!' said he, 'I put it to the touch once, and I
lost it all. Let her go,--with her stony heart, and her
beauty;--how set and terrible her look is now, for all her
loveliness of feature! She is afraid I shall speak what will
require some stern repression. Let her go. Beauty and heiress as
she may be, she will find it hard to meet with a truer heart than
mine. Let her go!' And there was no tone of regret, or emotion of any kind in the
voice with which he said good-bye; and the offered hand was taken
with a resolute calmness, and dropped as carelessly as if it had
been a dead and withered flower. But none in his household saw
Mr. Thornton again that day. He was busily engaged; or so he
said.
Margaret's strength was so utterly exhausted by these visits,
that she had to submit to much watching, and petting, and sighing
'I-told-you-so's,' from her aunt. Dixon said she was quite as bad
as she had been on the first day she heard of her father's death;
and she and Mrs. Shaw consulted as to the desirableness of
delaying the morrow's journey. But when her aunt reluctantly
proposed a few days' delay to Margaret, the latter writhed her
body as if in acute suffering, and said: 'Oh! let us go. I cannot be patient here. I shall not get well
here. I want to forget.' So the arrangements went on; and Captain Lennox came, and with
him news of Edith and the little boy; and Margaret found that the
indifferent, careless conversation of one who, however kind, was
not too warm and anxious a sympathiser, did her good. She roused
up; and by the time that she knew she might expect Higgins, she
was able to leave the room quietly, and await in her own chamber
the expected summons.