Page:Gaskell - North and South, vol. II, 1855.djvu/180

 by the 'strong reasons' which you will not confide to me. Then I shall have fulfilled my promise, and done my duty."

"She will never bear it," said he passionately.

"She will have to bear it, if I speak in her dead mother's name."

"Well!" said he, breaking away, "don't tell me any more about it. I cannot endure to think of it. It will be better that you should speak to her any way, than that she should not be spoken to at all.—Oh! that look of love!" continued he, between his teeth, as he bolted himself into his own private room. "And that cursed lie; which showed some terrible shame in the background, to be kept from the light in which I thought she lived perpetually! Oh, Margaret, Margaret! Mother, how you have tortured me! Oh! Margaret, could you not have loved me? I am but uncouth and hard, but I would never have led into you any falsehood for me."

The more Mrs. Thornton thought over what her son had said, in pleading for a merciful judgment for Margaret's indiscretion, the more bitterly she felt inclined towards her. She took a savage pleasure in the idea of "speaking her mind" to her, in the guise of fulfilment of a duty. She enjoyed the thought of showing herself untouched by the "glamour," which she was well aware Margaret had the power of throwing over many people. She snorted scornfully over the picture of the beauty of her victim; her jet black hair, her clear smooth skin, her lucid eyes would not help to save her one word of the just and stern reproach which Mrs. Thornton spent half the night in preparing to her mind.