\"how tainted?\" asked her father.

\"oh, papa, by that testing everything by the standard of wealth. when hespoke of the mechanical powers, he evidently looked upon them only asnew ways of extending trade and making money. and the poor menaround him--they were poor because they were vicious--out of the paleof his sympathies because they had not his iron nature, and thecapabilities that it gives him for being rich.\"

\"not vicious; he never said that. improvident and self-indulgent were hiswords.\"

margaret was collecting her mother\"s working materials, and preparingto go to bed. just as she was leāving the room, she hesitated--she wasinclined to make an acknowledgment which she thought would pleaseher father, but which to be full and true must include a little annoyance.

however, out it came.

\"papa, i do think mr. thornton a very remarkable man; but personally idon\"t like him at all.\"

\"and i do!\" said her father laughing. \"personally, as you call it, and all. idon\"t set him up for a hero, or anything of that kind. but good night,child. your mother looks sadly tired to-night, margaret.\"

margaret had noticed her mother\"s jaded appearance with anxiety forsome time past, and this remark of her father\"s sent her up to bed with adim fear lying like a weight on her heart. the life in milton was sodifferent from what mrs. hale had been accustomed to live in helstone,in and out perpetually into the fresh and open air; the air itself was sodifferent, deprived of all revivifying principle as it seemed to be here;the domestic worries pressed so very closely, and in so new and sordida form, upon all the women in the family, that there was good reason tofear that her mother\"s health might be being seriously affected.

there were several other signs of something wrong about mrs. hale.

--t，，

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