I believed that he
had never acted dishonorably, and I begged him to tell me the history.
He confessed to me that he had never told it before, not even to you,
because he had a great dislike to say, 'I was not wrong,' as if that
were proof, when there are guilty people who will say so. The truth
is, he knew nothing of this man Raffles, or that there were any bad
secrets about him; and he thought that Mr. Bulstrode offered him the
money because he repented, out of kindness, of having refused it
before. All his anxiety about his patient was to treat him rightly,
and he was a little uncomfortable that the case did not end as he had
expected; but he thought then and still thinks that there may have been
no wrong in it on any one's part. And I have told Mr. Farebrother, and
Mr. Brooke, and Sir James Chettam: they all believe in your husband.
That will cheer you, will it not? That will give you courage?"

Dorothea's face had become animated, and as it beamed on Rosamond very
close to her, she felt something like bashful timidity before a
superior, in the presence of this self-forgetful ardor. She said, with
blushing embarrassment, "Thank you: you are very kind."

"And he felt that he had been so wrong not to pour out everything about
this to you. But you will forgive him. It was because he feels so
much more about your happiness than anything else--he feels his life
bound into one with yours, and it hurts him more than anything, that
his misfortunes must hurt you. He could speak to me because I am an
indifferent person. And then I asked him if I might come to see you;
because I felt so much for his trouble and yours. That is why I came
yesterday, and why I am come to-day. Trouble is so hard to bear, is it
not?-- How can we live and think that any one has trouble--piercing
trouble--and we could help them, and never try?"

Dorothea, completely swayed by the feeling that she was uttering,
forgot everything but that she was speaking from out the heart of her
own trial to Rosamond's. The emotion had wrought itself more and more
into her utterance, till the tones might have gone to one's very
marrow, like a low cry from some suffering creature in the darkness.
And she had unconsciously laid her hand again on the little hand that
she had pressed before.

Rosamond, with an overmastering pang, as if a wound within her had been
probed, burst into hysterical crying as she had done the day before
when she clung to her husb