'Mr. Thornton, I believe!' said Margaret, after a half-instant's

pause, during which his unready words would not come. 'Will you

sit down. My father brought me to the door, not a minute ago, but

unfortunately he was not told that you were here, and he has gone

away on some business. But he will come back almost directly. I

am sorry you have had the trouble of calling twice.' Mr. Thornton was in habits of authority himself, but she seemed

to assume some kind of rule over him at once. He had been getting

impatient at the loss of his time on a market-day, the moment

before she appeared, yet now he calmly took a seat at her

bidding.

'Do you know where it is that Mr. Hale has gone to? Perhaps I

might be able to find him.' 'He has gone to a Mr. Donkin's in Canute Street. He is the

land-lord of the house my father wishes to take in Crampton.' Mr. Thornton knew the house. He had seen the advertisement, and

been to look at it, in compliance with a request of Mr. Bell's

that he would assist Mr. Hale to the best of his power: and also

instigated by his own interest in the case of a clergyman who had

given up his living under circumstances such as those of Mr.

Hale. Mr. Thornton had thought that the house in Crampton was

really just the thing; but now that he saw Margaret, with her

superb ways of moving and looking, he began to feel ashamed of

having imagined that it would do very well for the Hales, in

spite of a certain vulgarity in it which had struck him at the

time of his looking it over.

Margaret could not help her looks; but the short curled upper

lip, the round, massive up-turned chin, the manner of carrying

her head, her movements, full of a soft feminine defiance, always

gave strangers the impression of haughtiness. She was tired now,

and would rather have remained silent, and taken the rest her

father had planned for her; but, of course, she owed it to

herself to be a gentlewoman, and to speak courteously from time

to time to this stranger; not over-brushed, nor over-polished, it

must be confessed, after his rough encounter with Milton streets

and crowds. She wished that he would go, as he had once spoken of

doing, instead of sitting there, answering with curt sentences

all the remarks she made. She had taken off her shawl, and hung

it over the back of her chair. She sat facing him and facing the

light; her full beauty met his eye; her round white flexile

throat rising out of the full, yet lithe figure; her lips, moving

so slightly as she spoke, not breaking the cold serene look of

her face with any variation from the one lovely haughty curve;

her eyes, with their soft gloom, meeting his with quiet maiden

freedom. He almost said to himself that he did not like her,

before their conversation ended; he tried so to compensate

himself for the mortified feeling, that while he looked upon her

with an admiration he could not repress, she looked at him with

proud indifference, taking him, he thought, for what, in his

irritation, he told himself he was--a great rough fellow, with

not a grace or a refinement about him. Her quiet coldness of

demeanour he interpreted into contemptuousness, and resented it

in his heart to the pitch of almost inclining him to get up and

go away, and have nothing more to do with these Hales, and their

superciliousness.




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