rows, and
would have thought it very sinful in her to keep up an inward wail
because she was not completely happy, being rather disposed to dwell on
the superfluities of her lot. She could bear that the chief pleasures
of her tenderness should lie in memory, and the idea of marriage came
to her solely as a repulsive proposition from some suitor of whom she
at present knew nothing, but whose merits, as seen by her friends,
would be a source of torment to her:--"somebody who will manage your
property for you, my dear," was Mr. Brooke's attractive suggestion of
suitable characteristics. "I should like to manage it myself, if I
knew what to do with it," said Dorothea. No--she adhered to her
declaration that she would never be married again, and in the long
valley of her life which looked so flat and empty of waymarks, guidance
would come as she walked along the road, and saw her fellow-passengers
by the way.

This habitual state of feeling about Will Ladislaw had been strong in
all her waking hours since she had proposed to pay a visit to Mrs.
Lydgate, making a sort of background against which she saw Rosamond's
figure presented to her without hindrances to her interest and
compassion. There was evidently some mental separation, some barrier
to complete confidence which had arisen between this wife and the
husband who had yet made her happiness a law to him. That was a
trouble which no third person must directly touch. But Dorothea
thought with deep pity of the loneliness which must have come upon
Rosamond from the suspicions cast on her husband; and there would
surely be help in the manifestation of respect for Lydgate and sympathy
with her.

"I shall talk to her about her husband," thought Dorothea, as she was
being driven towards the town. The clear spring morning, the scent of
the moist earth, the fresh leaves just showing their creased-up wealth
of greenery from out their half-opened sheaths, seemed part of the
cheerfulness she was feeling from a long conversation with Mr.
Farebrother, who had joyfully accepted the justifying explanation of
Lydgate's conduct. "I shall take Mrs. Lydgate good news, and perhaps
she will like to talk to me and make a friend of me."

Dorothea had another errand in Lowick Gate: it was about a new
fine-toned bell for the school-house, and as she had to get out of her
carriage very near to Lydgate's, she walked thither across the street,
having told the coachman to wait for some pa