'Oh, there's Harrison's, where I bought so many of my wedding-things.
Dear! how altered! They've got immense plate-glass windows, larger
than Crawford's in Southampton. Oh, and there, I declare--no, it
is not--yes, it is--Margaret, we have just passed Mr. Henry Lennox.
Where can he be going, among all these shops?' Margaret started forwards, and as quickly fell back, half-smiling
at herself for the sudden motion. They were a hundred yards away
by this time; but he seemed like a relic of Helstone--he was
associated with a bright morning, an eventful day, and she should
have liked to have seen him, without his seeing her,--without the
chance of their speaking.
The evening, without employment, passed in a room high up in an
hotel, was long and heavy. Mr. Hale went out to his bookseller's,
and to call on a friend or two. Every one they saw, either in the
house or out in the streets, appeared hurrying to some
appointment, expected by, or expecting somebody. They alone
seemed strange and friendless, and desolate. Yet within a mile,
Margaret knew of house after house, where she for her own sake,
and her mother for her aunt Shaw's, would be welcomed, if they
came in gladness, or even in peace of mind. If they came
sorrowing, and wanting sympathy in a complicated trouble like the
present, then they would be felt as a shadow in all these houses
of intimate acquaintances, not friends. London life is too
whirling and full to admit of even an hour of that deep silence
of feeling which the friends of Job showed, when 'they sat with
him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a
word unto him; for they saw that his grief was very great.'