Ne'er to be Found Again

'Didn't I? My face must be very expressive,' replied Margaret.

'It always was. It has not lost the trick of being eloquent.'

'I did not like,' said Margaret, hastily, 'his way of advocating
what he knew to be wrong--so glaringly wrong--even in jest.'

'But it was very clever. How every word told! Do you remember the
happy epithets?' 'Yes.'

'And despise them, you would like to add. Pray don't scruple,
though he is my friend.' 'There! that is the exact tone in you, that--' she stopped short.

He listened for a moment to see if she would finish her sentence;
but she only reddened, and turned away; before she did so,
however, she heard him say, in a very low, clear voice,-'

If my tones, or modes of thought, are what you dislike, will you
do me the justice to tell me so, and so give me the chance of
learning to please you?'

All these weeks there was no intelligence of Mr. Bell's going to
Milton. He had spoken of it at Helstone as of a journey which he
might have to take in a very short time from then; but he must
have transacted his business by writing, Margaret thought, ere
now, and she knew that if he could, he would avoid going to a
place which he disliked, and moreover would little understand the
secret importance which she affixed to the explanation that could
only be given by word of mouth. She knew that he would feel that
it was necessary that it should be done; but whether in summer,
autumn, or winter, it would signify very little. It was now
August, and there had been no mention of the Spanish journey to
which he had alluded to Edith, and Margaret tried to reconcile
herself to the fading away of this illusion.