Page:Gaskell - North and South, vol. II, 1855.djvu/198

 them by a diviner instinct. He came to tell Higgins he would give him work; and he was more annoyed to find Margaret there than by hearing her last words; for then he understood that she was the woman who had urged Higgins to come to him; and he dreaded the admission of any thought of her, as a motive to what he was doing solely because it was right.

"So that was the lady you spoke of as a woman?" said he indignantly to Higgins. "You might have told me who she was."

"And then, maybe, yo'd ha' spoken of her more civil than yo' did; yo'd getten a mother who might ha' kept yo'r tongue in check when yo' were talking o' women being at the root of all the plagues."

"Of course you told that to Miss Hale?"

"In coorse I did. Leastways, I reckon I did. I telled her she weren't to meddle again in aught that concerned yo'."

"Whose children are those—yours?" Mr. Thornton had a pretty good notion whose they were, from what he had heard; but he felt awkward in turning the conversation round from this unpromising beginning.

"They're not mine, and they are mine."

"They are the children you spoke of to me this morning?"

"When yo' said," replied Higgins, turning round, with ill-smothered fierceness, "that my story might be true or might not, but it were a very unlikely one. Measter, I've not forgetten."

Mr. Thornton was silent for a moment; then he said: "No more have I. I remember what I said.