It was always a comfort to her to think that she had gone, though

it was only to hear that he had died in the night. She saw the

rooms that he had occupied, and associated them ever after most

fondly in her memory with the idea of her father, and his one

cherished and faithful friend.

They had promised Edith before starting, that if all had ended as

they feared, they would return to dinner; so that long, lingering

look around the room in which her father had died, had to be

interrupted, and a quiet farewell taken of the kind old face that

had so often come out with pleasant words, and merry quips and

cranks.

Captain Lennox fell asleep on their journey home; and Margaret

could cry at leisure, and bethink her of this fatal year, and all

the woes it had brought to her. No sooner was she fully aware of

one loss than another came--not to supersede her grief for the

one before, but to re-open wounds and feelings scarcely healed.

But at the sound of the tender voices of her aunt and Edith, of

merry little Sholto's glee at her arrival, and at the sight of

the well-lighted rooms, with their mistress pretty in her

paleness and her eager sorrowful interest, Margaret roused

herself from her heavy trance of almost superstitious

hopelessness, and began to feel that even around her joy and

gladness might gather. She had Edith's place on the sofa; Sholto

was taught to carry aunt Margaret's cup of tea very carefully to

her; and by the time she went up to dress, she could thank God

for having spared her dear old friend a long or a painful

illness.

But when night came--solemn night, and all the house was quiet,

Margaret still sate watching the beauty of a London sky at such

an hour, on such a summer evening; the faint pink reflection of

earthly lights on the soft clouds that float tranquilly into the

white moonlight, out of the warm gloom which lies motionless

around the horizon. Margaret's room had been the day nursery of

her childhood, just when it merged into girlhood, and when the

feelings and conscience had been first awakened into full

activity. On some such night as this she remembered promising to

herself to live as brave and noble a life as any heroine she ever

read or heard of in romance, a life sans peur et sans reproche;

it had seemed to her then that she had only to will, and such a

life would be accomplished. And now she had learnt that not only

to will, but also to pray, was a necessary condition in the truly

heroic. Trusting to herself, she had fallen. It was a just

consequence of her sin, that all excuses for it, all temptation

to it, should remain for ever unknown to the person in whose

opinion it had sunk her lowest. She stood face to face at last

with her sin. She knew it for what it was; Mr. Bell's kindly

sophistry that nearly all men were guilty of equivocal actions,

and that the motive ennobled the evil, had never had much real

weight with her. Her own first thought of how, if she had known

all, she might have fearlessly told the truth, seemed low and

poor. Nay, even now, her anxiety to have her character for truth

partially excused in Mr. Thornton's eyes, as Mr. Bell had

promised to do, was a very small and petty consideration, now

that she was afresh taught by death what life should be. If all

the world spoke, acted, or kept silence with intent to

deceive,--if dearest interests were at stake, and dearest lives

in peril,--if no one should ever know of her truth or her

falsehood to measure out their honour or contempt for her by,

straight alone where she stood, in the presence of God, she

prayed that she might have strength to speak and act the truth

for evermore.




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