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

 her hand groping feebly over the bed-clothes, for the touch of Mrs. Thornton's large firm fingers, she said, scarcely above her breath—Mrs. Thornton had to stoop from her erectness to listen,—

"Margaret—you have a daughter—my sister is in Italy. My child will be without a mother;—in a strange place,—if I diewill you"

And her filmy wandering eyes fixed themselves with an intensity of wistfulness on Mrs. Thornton's face. For a minute, there was no change in its rigidness; it was stern and unmoved;—nay, but that the eyes of the sick woman were growing dim with the slow- gathering tears, she might have seen a dark cloud cross the cold features. And it was no thought of her son, or of her living daughter Fanny, that stirred her heart at last ; but a sudden remembrance, suggested by something in the arrangement of the room,—of a little daughter—dead in infancy—long years ago—that, like a sudden sunbeam, melted the icy crust, behind which there was a real tender woman.

"You wish me to be a friend to Miss Hale," said Mrs. Thornton, in her measured voice, that would not soften with her heart, but came out distinct and clear.

Mrs. Hale, her eyes still fixed on Mrs. Thornton's face, pressed the hand that lay below hers on the coverlet. She could not speak. Mrs. Thornton sighed, "I will be a true friend, if circumstances require it. Not a tender friend. That I cannot be,"—("to her," she was on the point of adding, but she relented at the sight of that poor, anxious face.)—" It is not my nature to show affection even where I