Chapter 5 - Page 2

curled herself up on the
window-seat in the small, deeply-recessed window. That morning
when she had looked out, her heart had danced at seeing the
bright clear lights on the church tower, which foretold a fine
and sunny day. This evening--sixteen hours at most had past
by--she sat down, too full of sorrow to cry, but with a dull cold
pain, which seemed to have pressed the youth and buoyancy out of
her heart, never to return. Mr. Henry Lennox's visit--his
offer--was like a dream, a thing beside her actual life. The hard
reality was, that her father had so admitted tempting doubts into
his mind as to become a schismatic--an outcast; all the changes
consequent upon this grouped themselves around that one great
blighting fact.

She looked out upon the dark-gray lines of the church tower,
square and straight in the centre of the view, cutting against
the deep blue transparent depths beyond, into which she gazed,
and felt that she might gaze for ever, seeing at every moment
some farther distance, and yet no sign of God! It seemed to her
at the moment, as if the earth was more utterly desolate than if
girt in by an iron dome, behind which there might be the
ineffaceable peace and glory of the Almighty: those never-ending
depths of space, in their still serenity, were more mocking to
her than any material bounds could be--shutting in the cries of
earth's sufferers, which now might ascend into that infinite
splendour of vastness and be lost--lost for ever, before they
reached His throne. In this mood her father came in unheard. The
moonlight was strong enough to let him see his daughter in her
unusual place and attitude. He came to her and touched her
shoulder before she was aware that he was there.

'Margaret, I heard you were up. I could not help coming in to ask
you to pray with me--to say the Lord's Prayer; that will do good
to both of us.'

Mr. Hale and Margaret knelt by the window-seat--he looking up,
she bowed down in humble shame. God was there, close around them,
hearing her father's whispered words. Her father might be a
heretic; but had not she, in her despairing doubts not five
minutes before, shown herself a far more utter sceptic? She spoke
not a word, but stole to bed after her father had left her, like
a child ashamed of its fault. If the world was full of perplexing
problems she would trust, and only ask to see the one step
needful for the hour. Mr. Lennox--his visit, his proposal--the
remembrance of which had been so rudely pushed aside by the
subsequent events of the day--haunted her dreams that night. He
was climbing up some tree of fabulous height to reach the branch
whereon was slung her bonnet: he was falling, and she was
struggling to save him, but held