Chapter 33 - Page 2

idea that he should
see, and might possibly be able to comfort his old friend.

Margaret had all the difficulty in the world to persuade her
father not to invite Mr. Thornton. She had an indescribable
repugnance to this step being taken. The night before the
funeral, came a stately note from Mrs. Thornton to Miss Hale,
saying that, at her son's desire, their carriage should attend
the funeral, if it would not be disagreeable to the family.
Margaret tossed the note to her father.

'Oh, don't let us have these forms,' said she. 'Let us go
alone--you and me, papa. They don't care for us, or else he would
have offered to go himself, and not have proposed this sending an
empty carriage.'

'I thought you were so extremely averse to his going, Margaret,'
said Mr. Hale in some surprise.

'And so I am. I don't want him to come at all; and I should
especially dislike the idea of our asking him. But this seems
such a mockery of mourning that I did not expect it from him.'
She startled her father by bursting into tears. She had been so
subdued in her grief, so thoughtful for others, so gentle and
patient in all things, that he could not understand her impatient
ways to-night; she seemed agitated and restless; and at all the
tenderness which her father in his turn now lavished upon her,
she only cried the more.

She passed so bad a night that she was ill prepared for the
additional anxiety caused by a letter received from Frederick.
Mr. Lennox was out of town; his clerk said that he would return
by the following Tuesday at the latest; that he might possibly be
at home on Monday. Consequently, after some consideration,
Frederick had determined upon remaining in London a day or two
longer. He had thought of coming down to Milton again; the
temptation had been very strong; but the idea of Mr. Bell
domesticated in his father's house, and the alarm he had received
at the last moment at the railway station, had made him resolve
to stay in London. Margaret might be assured he would take every
precaution against being tracked by Leonards. Margaret was
thankful that she received this letter while her father was
absent in her mother's room. If he had been present, he would
have expected her to read it aloud to him, and it would have
raised in him a state of nervous alarm which she would have found
it impossible to soothe away. There was not merely the fact,
which disturbed her excessively, of Frederick's detention in
London, but there were allusions to the recognition at the last
moment at Milton, and the possibility of a pursuit, which made
her blood run cold; and how then would it have affected her
father? Many a time did Margaret repent of having suggested and
urged on the