her, thinking over the day, the happy walk,
happy sketching, cheerful pleasant dinner,
and the uncomfortable, miserable, walk in
the garden.

How different men were to women!
Here was she disturbed and unhappy,
because her instinct had made anything but a
refusal impossible; while he, not many
minutes after he had met with a rejection
of what ought to have been the deepest,
holiest proposal of his life, could speak as if
briefs, success, and all its superficial
consequences of a good house, clever and agreeable
society, were the sole avowed objects of his
desires. Oh dear! how she could have loved
him if he had but been different, with a difference
which she felt, on reflection, to be one
that went low—deep down. Then she took it
into her head that, after all, his lightness might
be but assumed, to cover a bitterness of
disappointment which would have been stamped
on her own heart if she had loved and been
rejected.

Her mother came into the room before
this whirl of thoughts was adjusted into
anything like order. Margaret had to
shake off the recollections of what had been
done and said through the day, and turn a
sympathising listener to the account of how
Dixon had complained that the ironing-
blanket had been burnt again; and how Susan
Lightfoot had been seen with artificial
flowers in her bonnet, thereby giving evidence
of a vain and giddy character. Mr. Hale
sipped his tea in abstracted silence; Margaret
had the responses all to herself. She wondered
how her father and mother could be so forgetful,
so regardless of their companion through
the day, as never to mention his name.
She forgot that he had not made them an
offer.

After tea Mr. Hale got up, and stood with
his elbow on the chiinney-piece, leaning his
head on his hand, musing over something,
and from time to time sighing deeply. Mrs.
Hale went out to consult with Dixon about
some winter clothing for the poor. Margaret
was preparing her mother's worsted work,
and rather shrinking from the thought of
the long evening, and wishing that bed-time
were come that she might go over the events
of the day again.

"Margaret!" said Mr. Hale, at last, in a
sort of sudden desperate way, that made her
start. "Is that tapestry thing of immediate
consequence? I mean, can you leave it and
come into my study? I want to speak
to you about something very serious to
us all."

"Very serious to us all." Mr. Lennox had
never had the opportunity of having any
private conversation with her father after her
refusal, or else that would indeed be a very
serious affair. In the first place, Margaret
felt guilty and ashamed of having grown so
much into a woman as to be thought of in
marriage; and secondly, she did not know if
her father might not be displeased that she had
taken upon herself to decline Mr. Lennox's
proposal. But she soon felt it was not about
anything, which, having only lately and
suddenly occurred, could have given rise to any
complicated thoughts, that her father wished
to speak to her. He made her take a chair by
him; he stirred the fire, snuffed the candles,
and sighed once or twice before he could
make up his mind to say—and it came out with
a jerk after all—"Margaret! I am going to
leave Helstone."

"Leave Helstone, papa! But why?"

Mr. Hale did not answer for a minute or
two. He played with some papers on the
table in a nervous and confused manner,
opening his lips to speak several times, but
closing them again without having the courage
to utter a word. Margaret could not bear
the sight of the suspense, which was even
more distressing to her father than to
herself.

"But why, dear papa? Do tell me!"

He looked up at her suddenly, and then
said with a slow and enforced calmness:

"Because I must no longer be a minister in
the Church of England."

Margaret had imagined nothing less than
that some of the preferments which her
mother so much desired had befallen her
father at last—something that would force
him to leave beautiful, beloved Helstone, and
perhaps compel him to go and live in some
of the stately and silent Closes which
Margaret had seen from time to time in cathedral
towns. They were grand and imposing places,
but if, to go there, it was necessary to leave
Helstone as a home for ever, that would have
been a sad, long, lingering pain. But nothing
to the shock she received from Mr. Hale's
last speech. What could he mean? It was
all the worse for being so mysterious. The
aspect of piteous distress on his face, almost
as if imploring a merciful and kind judgment
from his child, gave her a sudden sickening.
Could he have become implicated in anything
Frederick had done? Frederick was an outlaw.
Had her father, out of a natural love
for his son, connived at any—

"Oh! what is it? do speak, papa! tell me
all! Why can you no longer be a clergyman?
Surely, if the bishop were told all we know
about Frederick, and the hard, unjust—"

"It is nothing about Frederick; the bishop
would have nothing to do with that. It is
all myself. Margaret, I will tell you about it.
I will answer any questions this once, but
after to-night let us never speak of it again.
I can meet the consequences of my painful,
miserable doubts; but it is an effort beyond
me to speak of what has caused me so much
suffering."

"Doubts, papa! Doubts as to religion?"
asked Margaret, more shocked than ever.

"No! not doubts as to religion; not the
slightest injury to that."

He paused. Margaret sighed, as if standing