As he continued in it, he took this for a sign and actually went.

It did not fall out at once as he wished, but he got Mrs.Horn to talking again about her niece, and Mrs.Horn again regretted that nothing could be done by the fine arts to reclaim Margaret from good works.
"Is she at home?
Will you let me see her ?" asked Beacon, with something of the scientific interest of a physician inquiring for a patient whose symptoms have been rehearsed to him.

He had not asked for her before.
"Yes, certainly," said Mrs.Horn, and she went herself to call Margaret, and she did not return with her.

The girl entered with the gentle grace peculiar to her; and Beaton, bent as he was on his own consolation, could not help being struck with the spiritual exaltation of her look.
At sight of her, the vague hope he had never quite relinquished, that they might be something more than aesthetic friends, died in his heart.
She wore black, as she often did; but in spite of its fashion her dress received a nun-like effect from the pensive absence of her face.
"Decidedly," thought Beaton, "she is far gone in good works." But he rose, all the same, to meet her on the old level, and he began at once to talk to her of the subject he had been discussing with her aunt.
He said frankly that they both felt she had unjustifiably turned her back upon possibilities which she ought not to neglect.
"You know very well," she answered, "that I couldn't do anything in that way worth the time I should waste on it.

Don't talk of it, please.