He threw himself back in his seat, to try
with closed eyes to understand how one in life ,
yesterday could be dead to-day; and shortly
tears stole out between his grizzled
eyelashes, at the feeling of which he opened his
keen eyes, and looked as severely cheerful as
his set determination could make him. He
was not going to blubber before a set of
strangers. Not he!

There was no set of strangers, only one
sitting far from him on the same side. By
and bye Mr. Bell peered at him, to discover
what manner of man it was that might have
been observing his emotion; and behind the
great sheet of the outspread Times, he recognised
Mr. Thornton.

"Why, Thornton! is that you?" said he,
removing hastily to a closer proximity,
He shook Mr. Thornton vehemently by the
hand, until the gripe ended in a sudden relaxation,
for the hand was wanted to wipe away
tears. He had last seen Mr. Thornton in
his friend Hale's company.

"I'm going to Milton, bound on a melancholy
errand. Going to break to Hale's
daughter the news of his sudden death!

"Death! Mr. Hale dead!"

"Ay; I keep saying it to myself, 'Hale is
dead!' but it does not make it any the more
real. Hale is dead for all that. He went to
bed well, to all appearance, last night,and
was quite cold this morning when my servant
went to call him."

"Where? I don't understand!"

"At Oxford. He came to stay with me;
hadn't been in Oxford this seventeen years;
—and this is the end of it.

Not one word was spoken for above a
quarter of an hour. Then Mr. Thornton
said:

"And she!" and stopped full short

"Margaret you mean.  Yes! I am going
to tell her.  Poor fellow! how full his thoughts
were of her all last night! Good God! Last
night only.  And how immeasurably distant
he is now!  But I take Margaret as my
child for his sake.  I said last night I would
take her for her own sake.  Well, I take her
for both."

Mr. Thornton made one or two fruitless
attempts to speak, before he could get out the
words:

"What will become of her!"

"I rather fancy there will be two people
waiting for her: myself for one. I would
take a live dragon into my house to live, if,
by hiring such a chaperon, and setting up an
establishment of my own, I could make my
old age happy with having Margaret for a
daughter. But there are those Lennoxes!"

"Who are they?" asked Mr. Thornton
with trembling interest.

"Oh, smart London people, who very likely
will think they've the best right to her.
Captain Lennox married her cousin—the girl
she was brought up with. Good enough
people, I dare say. And there's her aunt,
Mrs. Shaw. There might be a way open,
perhaps, by my offering to marry that worthy
lady! but that would be quite a pis aller.
And then there's that brother!"

" What brother? A brother of her
aunt's?"

" No, no; a clever Lennox (the captain's
a fool, you must understand); a young
barrister, who will be setting his cap at
Margaret. I know he has had her in his mind
this five years or more; one of his chums
told me as much; and he was only kept
back by her want of fortune. Now that will
be done away with."

"How?" asked Mr. Thornton, too earnestly
curious to be aware of the impertinence of his
question.

" Why, she'll have my money at my death.
And if this Henry Lennox is half good enough
for her, and she likes him—well! I might
find another way of getting a home through a
marriage. I'm dreadfully afraid of being
tempted, at an unguarded moment, by the
aunt."

Neither Mr. Bell nor Mr. Thornton were in
a laughing humour; so the oddity of any of
the speeches which the former made was
unnoticed by them. Mr. Bell whistled, without
emitting any sound beyond a long hissing
breath; changed his seat, without finding
comfort or rest; while Mr. Thornton sate
immoveably still, his eyes fixed on one spot in
the newspaper, which he had taken up in
order to give himself leisure to think.

" Where have you been ?" asked Mr. Bell,
at length.

" To Havre. Trying to detect the secret of
the great rise in the price of cotton."

"Ugh! Cotton, and speculations, and
smoke, well-cleansed and well cared-for
machinery, and unwashed and neglected hands.
Poor old Hale! Poor old Hale! If you
could have known the change which it was
to him from Helstone. Do you know the New
Forest at all?"

"Yes." (Very shortly).

"Then you can fancy the difference between
it and Milton. What part were you in? Were
you ever at Helstone? a little picturesque
village, like some in the Odenwald? You
know Helstone?"

"I have seen it. It was a great change to
leave it and come to Milton."

He took up his newspaper with a
determined air, as if resolved to avoid further
conversation; and Mr. Bell was fain to resort to
his former occupation of trying to find out
how he could best break the news to
Margaret.

She was at an upstairs window; she saw
him alight; she guessed the truth with an
instinctive flash. She stood in the middle of
the drawing-room, as if arrested in her first
impulse to rush down stairs, and as if by the
same restraining thought she had been turned
to stone; so white and immoveable was she.

"Oh! don't tell me! I know if from your