“Well!” said Mr. Thornton, half-laughing, “it was not my proposal that we should go together. But there’s one comfort on your own showing. We neither of us can think much worse of the other than we do now.”
“That’s true,” said Higgins, reflectively. “I’ve been thinking ever sin’ I saw you, what a marcy it were yo’ did na take me on, for that I ne’er saw a man whom I could less abide. But that’s maybe been a hasty judgment; and work’s work to such as me. So, measter, I’ll come; and what’s more, I thank yo’; and that’s a deal fro’ me,” said he, more frankly, suddenly turning round and facing Mr. Thornton fully for the first time.
“And this is a deal from me,” said Mr. Thornton, giving Higgins’s hand a good grip. “Now mind you come sharp to your time,” continued he, resuming the master. “I’ll have no laggards at my mill. What fines we have, we keep pretty sharply. And the first time I catch you making mischief, off you go. So now you know where you are.”
“Yo’ spoke of my wisdom this morning. I reckon I may bring it wi’ me; or would yo’ rayther have me ’bout my brains?”
“ ’Bout your brains if you use them for meddling with my business; with your brains if you can keep to your own.”
“I shall need a deal o’ brains to settle where my business ends and yo’rs begins.”
“Your business has not begun yet, and mine stands still for me. So good afternoon.”
Just before Mr. Thornton came up to Mrs. Boucher’s door, Margaret came out of it. She did not see him; and he followed her for several yards, admiring her light and easy walk, and her tall and graceful figure. But, suddenly, this simple emotion of pleasure was tainted, poisoned by jealousy. He wished to overtake her, and speak to her, to see how she would receive him, now she must know he was aware of some other attachment. He wished too, but of this wish he was rather ashamed, that she should know that he had justified her wisdom in sending Higgins to him to ask for work, and had repented him of his morning’s decision. He came up to her. She started.
“Allow me to say, Miss Hale, that you were rather premature in expressing your disappointment. I have taken Higgins on.”
“I am glad of it,” said she coldly.
“He tells me, he repeated to you, what I said this morning about—,” Mr. Thornton hesitated. Margaret took it up:
“About women not meddling. You had a perfect right to express your opinion, which was a very correct one, I have no doubt. But,” she went on a little more eagerly, “Higgins did not quite tell you the exact truth.” The word “truth,” reminded her of her own untruth, and she stopped short, feeling exceedingly uncomfortable.
Mr. Thornton at first was puzzled to account for her silence; and then he remembered the lie she had told, and all that was foregone. “The exact truth!” said he. “Very few people do speak the exact truth. I have given up hoping for it. Miss Hale, have you no explanation to give me? You must perceive what I cannot but think.”
Margaret was silent. She was wondering whether an explanation of any kind would be consistent with her loyalty to Frederick.
“Nay,” said he, “I will ask no farther. I may be putting temptation in your way. At present, believe me, your secret is safe with me. But you run great risks, allow me to say, in being so indiscreet. I am only speaking as a friend of your father’s: if I had any other thought or hope, of course that is at an end. I am quite disinterested.”
“I am aware of that,” said Margaret, forcing herself to speak in an indifferent, careless way. “I am aware of what I must appear to you, but the secret is another person’s, and I cannot explain it without doing him harm.”
“I have not the slightest wish to pry into the gentleman’s secrets,” he said, with growing anger. “My own interest in you is—simply that of a friend. You may not believe me, Miss Hale, but it is—in spite of the persecution I’m afraid I threatened you with at one time—but that is all given up; all passed away. You believe me, Miss Hale?”
“Yes,” said Margaret, quietly and sadly.
“Then, really, I don’t see any reason for us to go on walking together. I thought, perhaps, you might have had something to say, but I see we are nothing to each other. If you’re quite convinced, that any foolish passion on my part is entirely over, I wish you good afternoon.” He walked off very hastily.
“What can he mean?” thought Margaret—“what could he mean by speaking so, as if I were always thinking that he cared for me, when I know he does not; he cannot. His mother will have said all those cruel things about me to him. But I won’t care for him. I surely am mistress enough of myself to control this wild, strange, miserable feeling, which tempted me even to betray my own dear Frederick, so that I might but regain his good opinion—the good opinion of a man who takes such pains to tell me that I am nothing to him. Come! poor little heart! be cheery and brave. We’ll be a great deal to one another, if we are thrown off and left desolate.”
Her father was almost startled by her merriment this morning. She talked incessantly, and forced her natural humour to an unusual pitch; and if there was a tinge of bitterness in much of what she said; if her accounts of the old Harley Street set were a little sarcastic, her father could not bear to check her, as he would have done at another time—for he was glad to see her shake
