murdered
man's brains. Rosamond had a placid but strong answer to such
speeches. Why then had he chosen her? It was a pity he had not had
Mrs. Ladislaw, whom he was always praising and placing above her. And
thus the conversation ended with the advantage on Rosamond's side. But
it would be unjust not to tell, that she never uttered a word in
depreciation of Dorothea, keeping in religious remembrance the
generosity which had come to her aid in the sharpest crisis of her life.

Dorothea herself had no dreams of being praised above other women,
feeling that there was always something better which she might have
done, if she had only been better and known better. Still, she never
repented that she had given up position and fortune to marry Will
Ladislaw, and he would have held it the greatest shame as well as
sorrow to him if she had repented. They were bound to each other by a
love stronger than any impulses which could have marred it. No life
would have been possible to Dorothea which was not filled with emotion,
and she had now a life filled also with a beneficent activity which she
had not the doubtful pains of discovering and marking out for herself.
Will became an ardent public man, working well in those times when
reforms were begun with a young hopefulness of immediate good which has
been much checked in our days, and getting at last returned to
Parliament by a constituency who paid his expenses. Dorothea could
have liked nothing better, since wrongs existed, than that her husband
should be in the thick of a struggle against them, and that she should
give him wifely help. Many who knew her, thought it a pity that so
substantive and rare a creature should have been absorbed into the life
of another, and be only known in a certain circle as a wife and mother.
But no one stated exactly what else that was in her power she ought
rather to have done--not even Sir James Chettam, who went no further
than the negative prescription that she ought not to have married Will
Ladislaw.

But this opinion of his did not cause a lasting alienation; and the way
in which the family was made whole again was characteristic of all
concerned. Mr. Brooke could not resist the pleasure of corresponding
with Will and Dorothea; and one morning when his pen had been
remarkably fluent on the prospects of Municipal Reform, it ran off into
an invitation to the Grange, which, once written, could not be done
away with at less cost than t