Page:Gaskell - North and South, vol. II, 1855.djvu/240

 "Where have you been?" asked Mr. Bell, at length.

"To Havre. Trying to detect the secret of the great rise in the price of cotton."

"Ugh! Cotton, and speculations, and smoke, well-cleansed and well-cared-for machinery, and unwashed and neglected hands. Poor old Hale! Poor old Hale ! If you could have known the change which it was to him from Helstone. Do you know the New Forest at all?"

"Yes." (Very shortly).

"Then you can fancy the difference between it and Milton. What part were you in? Were you ever at Helstone? a little picturesque village, like some in the Odenwald? You know Helstone?"

"I have seen it. It was a great change to leave it and come to Milton."

He took up his newspaper with a determined air, as if resolved to avoid further conversation; and Mr. Bell was fain to resort to his former occupation of trying to find out how he could best break the news to Margaret.

She was at an upstairs window; she saw him alight; she guessed the truth with an instinctive flash. She stood in the middle of the drawing-room, as if arrested in her first impulse to rush down stairs, and as if by the same restraining thought she had been turned to stone; so white and immoveable was she.

"Oh! don't tell me! I know it from your face! You would have sent—you would not have left him—if he were alive! Oh papa, papa!"