w and unimagined the agony of empty hands
and stifled wish! Very slow the angels are, sometimes, that are sent
to minister!

Margret, going down the stairs that morning, found none of the
chivalric unselfish glow of the night before in her home. It was an
old, bare house in the midst of dreary stubble fields, in which her
life was slowly to be worn out: working for those who did not
comprehend her; thanked her little,--that was all. It did not matter;
life was short: she could thank God for that at least.

She opened the house-door. A draught of cold morning air struck her
face, sweeping from the west; it had driven the fog in great gray banks
upon the hills, or in shimmering swamps into the cleft hollows: a vague
twilight filled the space left bare. Tiger, asleep in the hall, rushed
out into the meadow, barking, wild with the freshness and cold, then
back again to tear round her for a noisy good-morning. The touch of
the dog seemed to bring her closer to his master; she put him away; she
dared not suffer even that treachery to her purpose: the very
circumstances that had forced her to give him up made it weak cowardice
to turn again. It was a simple story, yet one which she dared not tell
to herself; for it was not altogether for her father's sake she had
made the sacrifice. She knew, that, though she might be near to this
man Holmes as his own soul, she was a clog on him,--stood in his
way,--kept him back. So she had quietly stood aside, taken up her own
solitary burden, and left him with his clear self-reliant life,--with
his Self, dearer to him than she had ever been. Why should it not be
dearer? She thought,--remembering the man as he was, a master among
men: fit to be a master. She,--what was she compared to him? He was
back again; she must see him. So she stood there with this persistent
dread running through her brain.

Suddenly, in the lane by the house, she heard a voice talking to
Joel,--the huckster-girl. What a weak, cheery sound it was in the cold
and fog! It touched her curiously: broke through her morbid thought as
anything true and healthy should have done. "Poor Lois!" she thought,
with an eager pity, forgetting her own intolerable future for the
moment, as she gathered up some breakfast and went with it down the
lane. Morning had come; great heavy bars of light fell from behind the
hills athwart the banks of gray and black fog; there was shifting,
uneasy, obstinate tumult among the