'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.'




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