Page:Gaskell - North and South, vol. I, 1855.djvu/294

 just in time to catch her. "Mother-mother!" cried he; "Come down—they are gone, and Miss Hale is hurt!" He bore her into the dining-room, and laid her on the sofa there; laid her down softly, and looking on her pure white face, the sense of what she was to him came upon him so keenly that he spoke it out in his pain:

"Oh, my Margaret—my Margaret! no one can tell what you are to me! Dead—cold as you lie there, you are the only woman I ever loved! Oh, Margaret—Margaret!"

Inarticulately as he spoke, kneeling by her, and rather moaning than saying the words, he started up, ashamed of himself, as his mother came in. She saw nothing, but her son a little paler, a little sterner than usual.

"Miss Hale is hurt, mother. A stone has grazed her temple. She has lost a good deal of blood, I'm afraid."

"She looks very seriously hurt,—I could almost fancy her dead," said Mrs. Thornton, a good deal alarmed.

"It is only a fainting-fit. She has spoken to me since." But all the blood in his body seemed to rush inwards to his heart as he spoke, and he absolutely trembled.

"Go and call Jane,—she can find me the things I want; and do you go to your Irish people, who are crying and shouting as if they were mad with fright."

He went. He went away as if weights were tied to every limb that bore him from her. He called Jane; he called his sister. She should have all