North and South
Page 47'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
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
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 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.