Chapter 34

CHAPTER XXXIV - FALSE AND TRUE

'Truth will fail thee never, never!

Though thy bark be tempest-driven,

Though each plank be rent and riven,

Truth will bear thee on for ever!'

ANON.

The 'bearing up better than likely' was a terrible strain upon
Margaret. Sometimes she thought she must give way, and cry out
with pain, as the sudden sharp thought came across her, even
during her apparently cheerful conversations with her father,
that she had no longer a mother. About Frederick, too, there was
great uneasiness. The Sunday post intervened, and interfered with
their London letters; and on Tuesday Margaret was surprised and
disheartened to find that there was still no letter. She was
quite in the dark as to his plans, and her father was miserable
at all this uncertainty. It broke in upon his lately acquired
habit of sitting still in one easy chair for half a day together.
He kept pacing up and down the room; then out of it; and she
heard him upon the landing opening and shutting the bed-room
doors, without any apparent object. She tried to tranquillise him
by reading aloud; but it was evident he could not listen for long
together. How thankful she was then, that she had kept to herself
the additional cause for anxiety produced by their encounter with
Leonards. She was thankful to hear Mr. Thornton announced. His
visit would force her father's thoughts into another channel.

He came up straight to her father, whose hands he took and wrung
without a word--holding them in his for a minute or two, during
which time his face, his eyes, his look, told of more sympathy
than could be put into words. Then he turned to Margaret. Not
'better than likely' did she look. Her stately beauty was dimmed
with much watching and with many tears. The expression on her
countenance was of gentle patient sadness--nay of positive
present suffering. He had not meant to greet her otherwise than
with his late studied coldness of demeanour; but he could not
help going up to her, as she stood a little aside, rendered timid
by the uncertainty of his manner of late, and saying the few
necessary common-place words in so tender a voice, that her eyes
filled with tears, and she turned away to hide her emotion. She
took her work and sate down very quiet and silent. Mr. Thornton's
heart beat quick and strong, and for the time he utterly forgot
the Outwood lane. He tried to talk to Mr. Hale: and--his presence
always a certain kind of pleasure to Mr. Hale, as his power and
decision made him, and his opinions, a safe, sure port--was
unusually agreeable to her father, as Margaret saw.

Presently Dixon came to the door and said, 'Miss Hale, you are
wanted.'

Dixon's manner was so