Manor, Dorothea was out
on the gravel, and came to greet them.

"Well, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, "we have just come from a meeting--a
sanitary meeting, you know."

"Was Mr. Lydgate there?" said Dorothea, who looked full of health and
animation, and stood with her head bare under the gleaming April
lights. "I want to see him and have a great consultation with him
about the Hospital. I have engaged with Mr. Bulstrode to do so."

"Oh, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, "we have been hearing bad news--bad
news, you know."

They walked through the garden towards the churchyard gate, Mr.
Farebrother wanting to go on to the parsonage; and Dorothea heard the
whole sad story.

She listened with deep interest, and begged to hear twice over the
facts and impressions concerning Lydgate. After a short silence,
pausing at the churchyard gate, and addressing Mr. Farebrother, she
said energetically--

"You don't believe that Mr. Lydgate is guilty of anything base? I will
not believe it. Let us find out the truth and clear him!"

BOOK VIII.

SUNSET AND SUNRISE.

CHAPTER LXXII.

Full souls are double mirrors, making still
An endless vista of fair things before,
Repeating things behind.

Dorothea's impetuous generosity, which would have leaped at once to the
vindication of Lydgate from the suspicion of having accepted money as a
bribe, underwent a melancholy check when she came to consider all the
circumstances of the case by the light of Mr. Farebrother's experience.

"It is a delicate matter to touch," he said. "How can we begin to
inquire into it? It must be either publicly by setting the magistrate
and coroner to work, or privately by questioning Lydgate. As to the
first proceeding there is no solid ground to go upon, else Hawley would
have adopted it; and as to opening the subject with Lydgate, I confess
I should shrink from it. He would probably take it as a deadly insult.
I have more than once experienced the difficulty of speaking to him on
personal matters. And--one should know the truth about his conduct
beforehand, to feel very confident of a good result."

"I feel convinced that his conduct has not been guilty: I believe that
people are almost always better than their neighbors think they are,"
said Dorothea. Some of her intensest experience in the last two years
had set her mind strongly in opposition to any unfavorable construction
of others; and for the first time she