"as if she hadn't enough to bear
without having Rickman on her shoulders."

"It seems to me that as he has done all this for us, we ought to stand
by him. If you _could_ do anything for him--couldn't you help him with
some introductions? Or, better still, give him work, at any rate till
he has found his feet? I'm sure you can count on his devotion--"

"Dear Lucy, she might be recommending me a valet."

"_Do_ do something for him, and you will oblige me more than I can
say."

That letter of Lucia's gave Jewdwine much matter for reflection and
some pain. He had winced at the sale of Court House; it struck him as
a personal blow. He had had a kind of tacit understanding with himself
that, in that future which he had meant to share with Lucia, Court
House would be the home of his retirement. Still, it must go. He had
to live in town, and if at the moment he could have afforded to marry
a penniless Lucia he could not have afforded two establishments.

As for the redemption of the Harden library he realized with a sharp
pang that risk there had been none. He saw that what young Rickman had
offered him was a unique and splendid opportunity, the opportunity of
doing a beautiful thing for Lucia, and that without the smallest
inconvenience to himself. And this opportunity had been missed. Just
because he could not make up his mind about Rickman, could not see
what Lucia had always seen, what he too saw now, that positively
luminous sincerity of his. He saw it even now reluctantly--though he
could never veer round again to his absurd theory of Rickman's
dishonesty. He would have liked, if he could, to regard him as a
culpable bungler; but even this consoling view was closed to him by
Lucia. It was plain from her account that Rickman's task had been
beyond human power. Jewdwine, therefore, was forced to the painful
conclusion that for this loss to himself and Lucia he had nothing to
blame but his own vacillation.

As for Rickman--

Lucia had taken a great deal of pains with that part of her subject,
for she was determined to do justice to it. She was aware that it was
open to her to take the ordinary practical view of Rickman as a
culpable blunderer, who, by holding his tongue when he should have
spoken, had involved her in the loss of much valuable property. To an
ordinary practical woman the fact that this blunder had entailed such
serious consequences to herself would have made any other theory
impossible. But Lucia wa