A/N: Thank you everyone who's been so kind to leave a message or favorite this story. Also, according to FF stats this is my most popular story, so thanks for still reading me.

I would like to hear your thoughts on how this could be continued. I imagined it as a very small scene interwoven with the original book (I even copied the original parts before and after), and I cannot imagine a continuation. But if someone has an idea to develop it, I may give it a try!

Every time I reread North and South, my imagination goes to the same scene that the book doesn't include: in Chapter 42, "Alone! Alone!" Mr. Thornton goes to Crampton to ask about Margaret. He is dismissed by Dixon but taken in by Mr. Bell. What would have happened if he had seen Margaret then?

Here's a conversation they both have which doesn't change their perception of each other and is simply inserted in the story. If it had been in the original manuscript I'm sure Dickens would have cut it off! My first ever fanfic. I hope you like it.

Language note: I am not an English native speaker, and I'm more familiar with American English so I didn't try to write in Gaskell's style. I tried to avoid anachronisms (nobody says "OK" or "stuff"), but the spelling is current and American-like. I hope you, kind readers, don't mind.

'Thornton! is that you? Come in for a minute or two; I want to speak to you.' So Mr. Thornton went into the study, and Dixon had to retreat into the kitchen, and reinstate herself in her own esteem by a prodigious story of Sir John Beresford's coach and six, when he was high sheriff.

'I don't know what I wanted to say to you after all. Only it's dull enough to sit in a room where every thing speaks to you of a dead friend. Yet Margaret and her aunt must have the drawingroom to themselves!'

'Is Mrs. - is her aunt come?' asked Mr. Thornton.

'Come? Yes! maid and all. One would have thought she might have come by herself at such a time! And now I shall have to turn out and find my way to the Clarendon.'

'You must not go to the Clarendon. We have five or six empty bed-rooms at home.'

'Well aired?'

'I think you may trust my mother for that.'

'Then I'll only run up-stairs and wish that wan girl good-night, and make my bow to her aunt, and go off with you straight.'

Mr. Bell was sometime up-stairs. Mr. Thornton began to think it long, for he was full of business, and had hardly been able to spare the time for running up to Crampton, and enquiring how Miss Hale was.

Mr. Thornton stood alone in the room and in spite of his anxiety to go back to business he let his mind wander. He had spent many pleasant evenings in this room, usually reading with Mr. Hale but sometimes also having tea with Mrs. Hale and Margaret. This very walls, stripped of that awful original wallpaper only because he hadn't wanted her to be surrounded by things she didn't like, had also witnessed his pitiful marriage proposal - here Mr. Thornton let out an involuntary sigh at the recollection, for painful and embarrassing as the situation had been, the words he uttered had been formed within the depths of his soul. And he could not (he would not!) blame his heart for choosing someone like Margaret Hale as the object of its affection. That she would not reciprocate his feelings was only for him to regret - her heart had chosen another man, a gentleman she would now follow into happiness but her regal presence and her lively spirit would stay in his mind... no, he would never regret meeting her.

Engrossed in such thoughts he approached one bookcase far from the door, and in the dim light of Milton's smoky afternoon he took and leafed through a copy of Dante's Inferno. He heard light steps from the staircase and assumed it was Margaret's aunt's maid, so he kept reading in his dark nook without raising his head from the book. From the corner of his eye he saw a female figure entering the room with her face downwards. With a swift fluid motion she closed the door behind her and knelt before Mr. Hale's favorite chair, where she buried her face in pillows and cried her heart out. The muffled sounds of her sobs and moans were clearly audible for anyone else present in the room, which he guessed, she wasn't aware of there being any.

Seeing Margaret in such state brought a moment of irrationality in which he, John Thornton, a man who prided himself on being fair and just, simply hated former Reverend Richard Hale: for dying without previous notice, for causing his beloved daughter so much pain and sorrow. For leaving Margaret alone in this world, and also (that he would never say this aloud didn't make it any less true) for effectively putting an end to her stay in Milton, only two miles of brisk walking away from Marlborough Mills and himself. In a fleeting instant of revelation he realized this was probably the last time they'd meet, in a long time at least, and while she would forever associate him with sadness and bereavement, one great rough fellow from smoky Milton, he would always treasure everything about her as the things most precious to his heart.

Two different things were now equally obvious to Mr. Thornton. One, that he was intruding a very private moment, seeing and hearing things that weren't meant for anyone to see or hear; and second, that he could not leave the room unnoticed. Sooner or later Margaret would collect herself and find him there, standing like a lamppost, staring like an unconcerned visitor to a zoo, useful as last week's news, and he didn't think she'd like it.

He considered his options. He might clear his throat loudly and say the usual words once she acknowledged his presence, ignoring the fact that she was almost lying on the floor, that her beautiful face would be swollen and blotched, that her voice would be broken. He stood a little longer still not deciding what to do, and took a tentative step forward, towards her or maybe the door. The rug swallowed the noise so he took another step, and then one more, and two more steps later he was towering over her prone wailing figure.

The certainty that they would never meet again was as material as an epitaph etched on a tombstone, and after everything that had happened between the two of them, every time when impropriety had been overlooked for the greater sake of the situation, he decided, against his better judgment and the memories attached to it, to kneel by her side and offer her all the comfort she would accept from him.

He reasoned that if she would despise him for it, if she would reject him again, it would not change the general nature of her disposition towards him, which had never been good and had turned irreversibly for worse after his proposal. In spite of all he had told himself so many times, of what he had first assumed and she had then confirmed, of the pain he knew that would ensue, he lowered himself by her side and lightly touched her arm and softly called her name.

She looked up immediately, her eyes wide and mouth half open in surprise. Her nose was blotched and swollen, her eyes red, her cheeks wet - still she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever met. He felt compelled to explain his presence quickly, even though those weren't the words he longed to say.

'I met Mr. Bell in the train and he told me the news. I am waiting for him to come down, as he is staying at my house tonight."

Her eyes were still big but she didn't look angry or exasperated or anything he had feared. She seemed so absorbed by her own distress to spare any animosity for him, so he decided to ignore their unusual physical position and continued:

"I am sorry for your loss, Miss Hale. Your father was a beloved friend and he will be missed."

She nodded and looked away, and her face contorted and more unwanted tears glided down her cheeks. Being so close, so improperly and unacceptably close as they were right now he could smell her sweet breath, and he could think of not one thing he would not willingly give only to be able to kiss and taste those tears, to feel the delicious weight of her head on his shoulder and have her round arms wrapped around his neck as he had once. But that would be going too far so he stood up, softly and carefully pulling her up to her feet with him. She sat on the chair and tried to compose herself breathing deeply. He sat on the chair facing her.

'Are you going to Oxford?', she finally asked.

'Yes, I am. If that is alright with you, Miss Hale.'

She nodded almost imperceptibly and her eyes welled again.

'I am sorry... I apologize, Mr. Thornton, I can't seem to control myself.' She opened her lips as to say something else but only sighed.

That she strove to keep an appearance of composure was only a means to keep her distance, him being only an acquaintance not allowed to witness her grief first hand. He understood that and he decided that he would not attempt to make her to open up to him more than what she inadvertently had. He stuck to facts and tried to harden his voice ever so slightly, just as if they were meeting on a busy street.

'Miss Hale, I wondered if there's anything you would like...' here Mr. Thornton paused, searching for the gentlest words, 'if you would like your father to be buried with something belonging to Mrs. Hale'.

She looked up at him, almost disoriented. His eyes told her of a world of feelings she was too overwhelmed to understand or acknowledge, but added to her regret and bereavement.

'A belonging of Mrs. Hale or of yours', he finished.

'That is very thoughtful of you, Mr. Thornton', she replied in a small voice after a moment. 'I do... I have... I'll have Dixon or Aunt Shaw to pick something for you, though they might take some time.'

'I can send for it tomorrow, in the early morning' he said, and he would have come himself if he knew Margaret would be handing out the belonging. 'Our train leaves at 8.23, I suppose someone can come collect it at 7.30.' Years of practice in setting plans and giving orders made his voice sound steadier than he felt, and it made sense since being master of a mill was what he did best. Whether that's what he wanted, and right now he wasn't so sure himself, was completely another question.

He didn't want to lose the battle against the lump in his throat, so he stood up and put on his hat but it simply slipped out of his lips, 'I am so sorry, I am so very sorry'.

He walked the few steps to the study door. Mr. Bell was coming down the stairs and joined him at the hall. Just as he closed the door behind him he heard Margaret replying,

'So am I.'

When they had set out upon their walk, Mr. Bell said:

'I was kept by those women in the drawing-room. Mrs. Shaw is anxious to get home-on account of her daughter, she says-and wants Margaret to go off with her at once. Now she is no more fit
for travelling than I am for flying. Besides, she says, and very justly, that she has friends she must see-that she must wish good-bye to several people; and then her aunt worried her about old claims, and was she forgetful of old friends? And she said, with a great burst of crying, she should be glad enough to go from a place where she had suffered so much. Now I must return to Oxford to-morrow, and I don't know on which side of the scale to throw in my voice.'