Unexpected Reunion — North and South

Thornton comes to Harley Street. He comes ostensibly on business, for legal and financial matters connected to his situation at the mill, but the social occasion extends into an evening that includes Margaret. Both of them perform the required composure throughout: they speak, they are present, they manage their responses in front of other people who are watching for no particular reason and yet cannot be disregarded. Margaret in pomegranate flowers is the chapter's visual centre. She is beautiful, quiet, present in the way that Thornton has always been aware of without being able to account for. The social conversation flows on, Edith talks, Lennox talks, and the two central characters carry their private awareness of each other through the evening without letting anything show. The chapter closes on Thornton's private calculation: any day might give him the certainty he has resolved never to speak without. He has been patient with himself in a way that was not available to him before. He is not less in love; he is more careful. The novel is within one chapter of the resolution it has been building toward.