When Crisis Reveals Character — North and South

Margaret visits the Thornton home and finds it swathed in its normal protective covers, the household poised and waiting. From the windows she watches the idle hands who have come to break the strike gather outside the mill gates, their mood shifting from passive to dangerous as Thornton descends alone to speak to them. When the crowd turns violent and she can see from above that he is about to be struck, Margaret runs down and throws herself against him as a human shield. A stone meant for Thornton strikes her instead, and she falls. The intervention, witnessed by the crowd, triggers a new round of ugly speculation: that Margaret shielded him because she is in love with him. The insinuation spreads through the watching men and is repeated in Thornton's own hearing. Mrs. Thornton, despite her hostility toward Margaret, goes out alone after the riot to fetch a doctor when she sees the girl is genuinely hurt. Thornton himself is shaken, moved, and convinced by the act that Margaret must have deeper feelings for him than she has shown. Margaret is helped home in a cab, the cut on her head tended, but it is the invisible wound, those insolent words spoken about her reputation, that she carries away from the scene. She defers reckoning with it until she is stronger, not knowing that Thornton has already begun drawing his own conclusions about what her action meant.