'Oh, John!' she said, and she lifted his face up. Such a strange,

pallid look of gloom was on it, that for a moment it struck her

that this look was the forerunner of death; but, as the rigidity

melted out of the countenance and the natural colour returned,

and she saw that he was himself once again, all worldly

mortification sank to nothing before the consciousness of the

great blessing that he himself by his simple existence was to

her. She thanked God for this, and this alone, with a fervour

that swept away all rebellious feelings from her mind.

He did not speak readily; but he went and opened the shutters,

and let the ruddy light of dawn flood the room. But the wind was

in the east; the weather was piercing cold, as it had been for

weeks; there would be no demand for light summer goods this year.

That hope for the revival of trade must utterly be given up.

It was a great comfort to have had this conversation with his

mother; and to feel sure that, however they might henceforward

keep silence on all these anxieties, they yet understood each

other's feelings, and were, if not in harmony, at least not in

discord with each other, in their way of viewing them. Fanny's

husband was vexed at Thornton's refusal to take any share in the

speculation which he had offered to him, and withdrew from any

possibility of being supposed able to assist him with the ready

money, which indeed the speculator needed for his own venture.

There was nothing for it at last, but that which Mr. Thornton had

dreaded for many weeks; he had to give up the business in which

he had been so long engaged with so much honour and success; and

look out for a subordinate situation. Marlborough Mills and the

adjacent dwelling were held under a long lease; they must, if

possible, be relet. There was an immediate choice of situations

offered to Mr. Thornton. Mr. Hamper would have been only too glad

to have secured him as a steady and experienced partner for his

son, whom he was setting up with a large capital in a

neighbouring town; but the young man was half-educated as

regarded information, and wholly uneducated as regarded any other

responsibility than that of getting money, and brutalised both as

to his pleasures and his pains. Mr. Thornton declined having any

share in a partnership, which would frustrate what few plans he

had that survived the wreck of his fortunes. He would sooner

consent to be only a manager, where he could have a certain

degree of power beyond the mere money-getting part, than have to

fall in with the tyrannical humours of a moneyed partner with

whom he felt sure that he should quarrel in a few months.




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