Chapter 46 - Page 2

strangely, had gone away from her, and vanished from the face of
the earth. It hurt her to see the Helstone road so flooded in the
sun-light, and every turn and every familiar tree so precisely
the same in its summer glory as it had been in former years.
Nature felt no change, and was ever young.

Mr. Bell knew something of what would be passing through her
mind, and wisely and kindly held his tongue. They drove up to the
Lennard Arms; half farm-house, half-inn, standing a little apart
from the road, as much as to say, that the host did not so depend
on the custom of travellers, as to have to court it by any
obtrusiveness; they, rather, must seek him out. The house fronted
the village green; and right before it stood an immemorial
lime-tree benched all round, in some hidden recesses of whose
leafy wealth hung the grim escutcheon of the Lennards. The door
of the inn stood wide open, but there was no hospitable hurry to
receive the travellers. When the landlady did appear--and they
might have abstracted many an article first--she gave them a kind
welcome, almost as if they had been invited guests, and
apologised for her coming having been so delayed, by saying, that
it was hay-time, and the provisions for the men had to be sent
a-field, and she had been too busy packing up the baskets to hear
the noise of wheels over the road, which, since they had left the
highway, ran over soft short turf.

'Why, bless me!' exclaimed she, as at the end of her apology, a
glint of sunlight showed her Margaret's face, hitherto unobserved
in that shady parlour. 'It's Miss Hale, Jenny,' said she, running
to the door, and calling to her daughter. 'Come here, come
directly, it's Miss Hale!' And then she went up to Margaret, and
shook her hands with motherly fondness.

'And how are you all? How's the Vicar and Miss Dixon? The Vicar
above all! God bless him! We've never ceased to be sorry that he
left.'

Margaret tried to speak and tell her of her father's death; of
her mother's it was evident that Mrs. Purkis was aware, from her
omission of her name. But she choked in the effort, and could
only touch her deep mourning, and say the one word, 'Papa.'

'Surely, sir, it's never so!' said Mrs. Purkis, turning to Mr.
Bell for confirmation of the sad suspicion that now entered her
mind. 'There was a gentleman here in the spring--it might have
been as long ago as last winter--who told us a deal of Mr. Hale
and Miss Margaret; and he said Mrs. Hale was gone, poor lady. But
never a word of the Vicar's being ailing!'

'It is so, however,' said Mr. Bell. 'He died quite suddenly, when
on a visit to me at Oxford. He was a good man, Mrs. Purkis, and
there's many of us that might be thankful to