North and South, Chapter 23 summary

What happens

1. Mr. Thornton returns, learns Margaret has gone home, and hears his mother interpret her rescue as evidence of love.
2. He arranges protection against further violence and agrees to return home rather than visit Margaret that evening.
3. Mrs. Thornton encourages his hopes but privately cries over the loss of her exclusive place in his affections.
4. At home, Margaret declines Bessy Higgins's request for a visit and privately questions her public intervention.
5. She concludes that preventing violence justifies her actions, then insists she is well when the water bed arrives.
6. Margaret entertains her father without mentioning the riot, then lies exhausted under the imagined scrutiny of watching faces.

In this chapter

What to notice

Margaret separates the justice of preventing violence from other people's judgments about her feelings. Her shame does not make her reject the action itself.

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