Page:Gaskell - North and South, vol. I, 1855.djvu/65

Rh come to stay with us to-morrow. Next Sunday I preach my farewell sermon."

Was it to be so sudden then? thought Margaret; and yet perhaps it was as well. Lingering would only add stings to the pain; it was better to be stunned into numbness by hearing of all these arrangements, which seemed to be nearly completed before she had been told. "What does mamma say?" asked she, with a deep sigh.

To her surprise, her father began to walk about again before he answered. At length he stopped and replied:

"Margaret, I am a poor coward after all. I cannot bear to give pain. I know so well your mother's married life has not been all she hoped—all she had a right to expect—and this will be such a blow to her, that I have never had the heart, the power to tell her. She must be told though, now," said he, looking wistfully at his daughter. Margaret was almost overpowered with the idea that her mother knew nothing of it all, and yet the affair was so far advanced!

"Yes, indeed she must," said Margaret. "Perhaps, after all, she may not—Oh yes! she will, she must be shocked"—as the force of the blow returned upon herself in trying to realise how another would take it. "Where are we to go to?" said she at last, struck with a fresh wonder as to their future plans, if plans indeed her father had.

"To Milton-Northern," he answered, with a dull indifference, for he had perceived that, although his daughter's love had made her cling to him, and for a moment strive to soothe him with her love, yet