her and every other object; and yet
she had a throbbing excitement like an alarm upon her--a sense that
she was doing something daringly defiant for his sake.

When the little lady had trotted away on her mission, Dorothea stood in
the middle of the library with her hands falling clasped before her,
making no attempt to compose herself in an attitude of dignified
unconsciousness. What she was least conscious of just then was her own
body: she was thinking of what was likely to be in Will's mind, and of
the hard feelings that others had had about him. How could any duty
bind her to hardness? Resistance to unjust dispraise had mingled with
her feeling for him from the very first, and now in the rebound of her
heart after her anguish the resistance was stronger than ever. "If I
love him too much it is because he has been used so ill:"--there was a
voice within her saying this to some imagined audience in the library,
when the door was opened, and she saw Will before her.

She did not move, and he came towards her with more doubt and timidity
in his face than she had ever seen before. He was in a state of
uncertainty which made him afraid lest some look or word of his should
condemn him to a new distance from her; and Dorothea was afraid of her
_own_ emotion. She looked as if there were a spell upon her, keeping
her motionless and hindering her from unclasping her hands, while some
intense, grave yearning was imprisoned within her eyes. Seeing that
she did not put out her hand as usual, Will paused a yard from her and
said with embarrassment, "I am so grateful to you for seeing me."

"I wanted to see you," said Dorothea, having no other words at command.
It did not occur to her to sit down, and Will did not give a cheerful
interpretation to this queenly way of receiving him; but he went on to
say what he had made up his mind to say.

"I fear you think me foolish and perhaps wrong for coming back so soon.
I have been punished for my impatience. You know--every one knows
now--a painful story about my parentage. I knew of it before I went
away, and I always meant to tell you of it if--if we ever met again."

There was a slight movement in Dorothea, and she unclasped her hands,
but immediately folded them over each other.

"But the affair is matter of gossip now," Will continued. "I wished
you to know that something connected with it--something which happened
before I went away, helped to bring me down here agai