 sign. Out he came.
'Mamma! Papa is going to leave Helstone!' she blurted forth. 'He's going to leave the Church, and live in Milton-Northern.' There were the three hard facts hardly spoken.
'What makes you say so?' asked Mrs. Hale, in a surprised incredulous voice. 'Who has been telling you such nonsense?'
'Papa himself,' said Margaret, longing to say something gentle and consoling, but literally not knowing how. They were close to a garden-bench. Mrs. Hale sat down, and began to cry.
'I don't understand you,' she said. 'Either you have made some great mistake, or I don't quite understand you.'
'No, mother, I have made no mistake. Papa has written to the bishop, saying that he has such doubts that he cannot conscientiously remain a priest of the Church of England, and that he must give up Helstone. He has also consulted Mr. Bell—Frederick's godfather, you know, mamma; and it is arranged that we go to live in Milton-Northern.' Mrs. Hale looked up in Margaret's face all the time she was speaking these words: the shadow on her countenance told that she, at least, believed in the truth of what she said.
'I don't think it can be true,' said Mrs. Hale, at length. 'He would surely have told me before it came to this.'
It came strongly upon Margaret's mind that her mother ought to have been told: that whatever her faults of discontent and repining might have been, it was an error in her father to have left her to learn his change of opinion, and his approaching change of life, from her better-informed child. Margaret sat down by her mother, and took her unresisting head on her breast, bending her own soft cheeks down caressingly to touch her face.
'Dear, darling mamma! we were so afraid of giving you pain. Papa felt so acutely—you know you are not strong, and there must have been such terrible suspense to go through.'
'When did he tell you, Margaret?'
'Yesterday, only yesterday,' replied Margaret, detecting the jealousy which prompted the inquiry. 'Poor papa!'—trying to divert her mother's thoughts into compassionate sympathy for all her father had gone through. Mrs. Hale raised her head.
'What does he mean by having doubts?' she asked. '
