'Oh, mamma,' said Margaret, faintly smiling as she kissed her
mother, 'I am quite well--don't alarm yourself about me; I am
only tired.'

Margaret went upstairs. To soothe her mother's anxiety she
submitted to a basin of gruel. She was lying languidly in bed
when Mrs. Hale came up to make some last inquiries and kiss her
before going to her own room for the night. But the instant she
heard her mother's door locked, she sprang out of bed, and
throwing her dressing-gown on, she began to pace up and down the
room, until the creaking of one of the boards reminded her that
she must make no noise. She went and curled herself up on the
window-seat in the small, deeply-recessed window. That morning
when she had looked out, her heart had danced at seeing the
bright clear lights on the church tower, which foretold a fine
and sunny day. This evening--sixteen hours at most had past
by--she sat down, too full of sorrow to cry, but with a dull cold
pain, which seemed to have pressed the youth and buoyancy out of
her heart, never to return. Mr. Henry Lennox's visit--his
offer--was like a dream, a thing beside her actual life. The hard
reality was, that her father had so admitted tempting doubts into
his mind as to become a schismatic--an outcast; all the changes
consequent upon this grouped themselves around that one great
blighting fact.

She looked out upon the dark-gray lines of the church tower,
square and straight in the centre of the view, cutting against
the deep blue transparent depths beyond, into which she gazed,
and felt that she might gaze for ever, seeing at every moment
some farther distance, and yet no sign of God! It seemed to her