prompt:
Chapter: The Return to the Mill

Between four and five o'clock on the afternoon of the fifth day from
that on which Stephen and Maggie had left St. Ogg's, Tom Tulliver was
standing on the gravel walk outside the old house at Dorlcote Mill. He
was master there now; he had half fulfilled his father's dying wish,
and by years of steady self-government and energetic work he had
brought himself near to the attainment of more than the old
respectability which had been the proud inheritance of the Dodsons and
Tullivers.

But Tom's face, as he stood in the hot, still sunshine of that summer
afternoon, had no gladness, no triumph in it. His mouth wore its
bitterest expression, his severe brow its hardest and deepest fold, as
he drew down his hat farther over his eyes to shelter them from the
sun, and thrusting his hands deep into his pockets, began to walk up
and down the gravel. No news of his sister had been heard since Bob
Jakin had come back in the steamer from Mudport, and put an end to all
improbable suppositions of an accident on the water by stating that he
had seen her land from a vessel with Mr. Stephen Guest. Would the next
news be that she was married,--or what? Probably that she was not
married; Tom's mind was set to the expectation of the worst that could
happen,--not death, but disgrace.

As he was walking with his back toward the entrance gate, and his face
toward the rushing mill-stream, a tall, dark-eyed figure, that we know
well, approached the gate, and paused to look at him with a
fast-beating heart. Her brother was the human being of whom she had
been most afraid from her childhood upward; afraid with that fear
which springs in us when we love one who is inexorable, unbending,
unmodifiable, with a mind that we can never mould ourselves upon, and
yet that we cannot endure to alienate from us.

That deep-rooted fear was shaking Maggie now; but her mind was
unswervingly bent on returning to her brother, as the natural refuge
that had been given her. In her deep humiliation under the retrospect
of her own weakness,--in her anguish at the injury she had
inflicted,--she almost desired to endure the severity of Tom's
reproof, to submit in patient silence to that harsh, disapproving
judgment against which she had so often rebelled; it seemed no more
than just to her now,--who was weaker than she was? She craved that
outward help to her better purpose which would come from complete,
submissive confession; from being in the presence of those whose looks
and words would be a reflection of her own conscience.

Maggie had been kept on her bed at York for a day with that
prostrating headache which was likely to follow on the terrible strain
of the previous day and night. There was an expression of physical
pain still about her brow and eyes, and her whole appearance, with her
dress so long unchanged, was worn and distressed. She lifted the latch
of the gate and walked in slowly. Tom did not hear the gate; he was
just then close upon the roaring dam; but he presently turned, and
lifting up his eyes, saw the figure whose worn look and loneliness
seemed to him a confirmation of his worst conjectures. He paused,
trembling and white with disgust and indignation.

Maggie paused too, three yards before him. She felt the hatred in his
face, felt it rushing through her fibres; but she must speak.

"Tom," she began faintly, "I am come back to you,--I am come back
home--for refuge--to tell you everything."

"You will find no home with me," he answered, with tremulous rage.
"You have disgraced us all. You have disgraced my father's name. You
have been a curse to your best friends. You have been base, deceitful;
no motives are strong enough to restrain you. I wash my hands of you
forever. You don't belong to me."

Their mother had come to the door now. She stood paralyzed by the
double shock of seeing Maggie and hearing Tom's words.

"Tom," said Maggie, with more courage, "I am perhaps not so guilty as
you believe me to be. I never meant to give way to my feelings. I
struggled against them. I was carried too far in the boat to come back
on Tuesday. I came back as soon as I could."

"I can't believe in you any more," said Tom, gradually passing from
the tremulous excitement of the first moment to cold inflexibility.
"You have been carrying on a clandestine relation with Stephen
Guest,--as you did before with another. He went to see you at my aunt
Moss's; you walked alone with him in the lanes; you must have behaved
as no modest girl would have done to her cousin's lover, else that
could never have happened. The people at Luckreth saw you pass; you
passed all the other places; you knew what you were doing. You have
been using Philip Wakem as a screen to deceive Lucy,--the kindest
friend you ever had. Go and see the return you have made her. She's
ill; unable to speak. My mother can't go near her, lest she should
remind her of you."

Maggie was half stunned,--too heavily pressed upon by her anguish even
to discern any difference between her actual guilt and her brother's
accusations, still less to vindicate herself.

"Tom," she said, crushing her hands together under her cloak, in the
effort to speak again, "whatever I have done, I repent it bitterly. I
want to make amends. I will endure anything. I want to be kept from
doing wrong again."

"What _will_ keep you?" said Tom, with cruel bitterness. "Not
religion; not your natural feelings of gratitude and honor. And he--he
would deserve to be shot, if it were not----But you are ten times
worse than he is. I loathe your character and your conduct. You
struggled with your feelings, you say. Yes! _I_ have had feelings to
struggle with; but I conquered them. I have had a harder life than you
have had; but I have found _my_ comfort in doing my duty. But I will
sanction no such character as yours; the world shall know that _I_
feel the difference between right and wrong. If you are in want, I
will provide for you; let my mother know. But you shall not come under
my roof. It is enough that I have to bear the thought of your
disgrace; the sight of you is hateful to me."

Slowly Maggie was turning away with despair in her heart. But the poor
frightened mother's love leaped out now, stronger than all dread.

"My child! I'll go with you. You've got a mother."

Oh, the sweet rest of that embrace to the heart-stricken Maggie! More
helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will
not forsake us.

Tom turned and walked into the house.

"Come in, my child," Mrs. Tulliver whispered. "He'll let you stay and
sleep in my bed. He won't deny that if I ask him."

"No, mother," said Maggie, in a low tone, like a moan. "I will never
go in."

"Then wait for me outside. I'll get ready and come with you."

When his mother appeared with her bonnet on, Tom came out to her in
the passage, and put money into her hands.

"My house is yours, mother, always," he said. "You will come and let
me know everything you want; you will come back to me."

Poor Mrs. Tulliver took the money, too frightened to say anything. The
only thing clear to her was the mother's instinct that she would go
with her unhappy child.

Maggie was waiting outside the gate; she took her mother's hand and
they walked a little way in silence.

"Mother," said Maggie, at last, "we will go to Luke's cottage. Luke
will take me in. He was very good to me when I was a little girl."

"He's got no room for us, my dear, now; his wife's got so many
children. I don't know where to go, if it isn't to one o' your aunts;
and I hardly durst," said poor Mrs. Tulliver, quite destitute of
mental resources in this extremity.

Maggie was silent a little while, and then said,--

"Let us go to Bob Jakin's, mother; his wife will have room for us, if
they have no other lodger."

So they went on their way to St. Ogg's, to the old house by the
river-side.

Bob himself was at home, with a heaviness at heart which resisted even
the new joy and pride of possessing a two-months'-old baby, quite the
liveliest of its age that had ever been born to prince or packman. He
would perhaps not so thoroughly have understood all the dubiousness of
Maggie's appearance with Mr. Stephen Guest on the quay at Mudport if
he had not witnessed the effect it produced on Tom when he went to
report it; and since then, the circumstances which in any case gave a
disastrous character to her elopement had passed beyond the more
polite circles of St. Ogg's, and had become matter of common talk,
accessible to the grooms and errand-boys. So that when he opened the
door and saw Maggie standing before him in her sorrow and weariness,
he had no questions to ask except one which he dared only ask
himself,--where was Mr. Stephen Guest? Bob, for his part, hoped he
might be in the warmest department of an asylum understood to exist in
the other world for gentlemen who are likely to be in fallen
circumstances there.

The lodgings were vacant, and both Mrs. Jakin the larger and Mrs.
Jakin the less were commanded to make all things comfortable for "the
old Missis and the young Miss"; alas that she was still "Miss!" The
ingenious Bob was sorely perplexed as to how this result could have
come about; how Mr. Stephen Guest could have gone away from her, or
could have let her go away from him, when he had the chance of keeping
her with him. But he was silent, and would not allow his wife to ask
him a question; would not present himself in the room, lest it should
appear like intrusion and a wish to pry; having the same chivalry
toward dark-eyed Maggie as in the days when he had bought her the
memorable present of books.

But after a day or two Mrs. Tulliver was gone to the Mill again for a
few hours to see to Tom's household matters. Maggie had wished this;
after the first violent outburst of feeling which came as soon as she
had no longer any active purpose to fulfil, she was less in need of
her mother's presence; she even desired to be alone with her grief.
But she had been solitary only a little while in the old sitting-room
that looked on the river, when there came a tap at the door, and
turning round her sad face as she said "Come in," she saw Bob enter,
with the baby in his arms and Mumps at his heels.

"We'll go back, if it disturbs you, Miss," said Bob.

"No," said Maggie, in a low voice, wishing she could smile.

Bob, closing the door behind him, came and stood before her.

"You see, we've got a little un, Miss, and I want'd you to look at it,
and take it in your arms, if you'd be so good. For we made free to
name it after you, and it 'ud be better for your takin' a bit o'
notice on it."

Maggie could not speak, but she put out her arms to receive the tiny
baby, while Mumps snuffed at it anxiously, to ascertain that this
transference was all right. Maggie's heart had swelled at this action
and speech of Bob's; she knew well enough that it was a way he had
chosen to show his sympathy and respect.

"Sit down, Bob," she said presently, and he sat down in silence,
finding his tongue unmanageable in quite a new fashion, refusing to
say what he wanted it to say.

"Bob," she said, after a few moments, looking down at the baby, and
holding it anxiously, as if she feared it might slip from her mind and
her fingers, "I have a favor to ask of you."

"Don't you speak so, Miss," said Bob, grasping the skin of Mumps's
neck; "if there's anything I can do for you, I should look upon it as
a day's earnings."

"I want you to go to Dr. Kenn's, and ask to speak to him, and tell him
that I am here, and should be very grateful if he would come to me
while my mother is away. She will not come back till evening."

"Eh, Miss, I'd do it in a minute,--it is but a step,--but Dr. Kenn's
wife lies dead; she's to be buried to-morrow; died the day I come from
Mudport. It's all the more pity she should ha' died just now, if you
want him. I hardly like to go a-nigh him yet."

"Oh no, Bob," said Maggie, "we must let it be,--till after a few days,
perhaps, when you hear that he is going about again. But perhaps he
may be going out of town--to a distance," she added, with a new sense
of despondency at this idea.

"Not he, Miss," said Bob. "_He'll_ none go away. He isn't one o' them
gentlefolks as go to cry at waterin'-places when their wives die; he's
got summat else to do. He looks fine and sharp after the parish, he
does. He christened the little un; an' he was _at_ me to know what I
did of a Sunday, as I didn't come to church. But I told him I was upo'
the travel three parts o' the Sundays,--an' then I'm so used to bein'
on my legs, I can't sit so long on end,--'an' lors, sir,' says I, 'a
packman can do wi' a small 'lowance o' church; it tastes strong,' says
I; 'there's no call to lay it on thick.' Eh, Miss, how good the little
un is wi' you! It's like as if it knowed you; it partly does, I'll be
bound,--like the birds know the mornin'."

Bob's tongue was now evidently loosed from its unwonted bondage, and
might even be in danger of doing more work than was required of it.
But the subjects on which he longed to be informed were so steep and
difficult of approach, that his tongue was likely to run on along the
level rather than to carry him on that unbeaten road. He felt this,
and was silent again for a little while, ruminating much on the
possible forms in which he might put a question. At last he said, in a
more timid voice than usual,--

"Will you give me leave to ask you only one thing, Miss?"

Maggie was rather startled, but she answered, "Yes, Bob, if it is
about myself--not about any one else."

"Well, Miss, it's this. _Do_ you owe anybody a grudge?"

"No, not any one," said Maggie, looking up at him inquiringly. "Why?"

"Oh, lors, Miss," said Bob, pinching Mumps's neck harder than ever. "I
wish you did, an' tell me; I'd leather him till I couldn't see--I
would--an' the Justice might do what he liked to me arter."

"Oh, Bob," said Maggie, smiling faintly, "you're a very good friend to
me. But I shouldn't like to punish any one, even if they'd done me
wrong; I've done wrong myself too often."

This view of things was puzzling to Bob, and threw more obscurity than
ever over what could possibly have happened between Stephen and
Maggie. But further questions would have been too intrusive, even if
he could have framed them suitably, and he was obliged to carry baby
away again to an expectant mother.

"Happen you'd like Mumps for company, Miss," he said when he had taken
the baby again. "He's rare company, Mumps is; he knows iverything, an'
makes no bother about it. If I tell him, he'll lie before you an'
watch you, as still,--just as he watches my pack. You'd better let me
leave him a bit; he'll get fond on you. Lors, it's a fine thing to hev
a dumb brute fond on you; it'll stick to you, an' make no jaw."

"Yes, do leave him, please," said Maggie. "I think I should like to
have Mumps for a friend."

"Mumps, lie down there," said Bob, pointing to a place in front of
Maggie, "and niver do you stir till you're spoke to."

Mumps lay down at once, and made no sign of restlessness when his
master left the room.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Maggie has been away from St. Ogg's for five days. She was so distraught that she accidentally took the wrong carriage when she left Mudport and headed north. She spent the night in York before turning around and heading back south to St. Ogg's. Maggie goes to see Tom first thing. Tom already knows about her and Stephen. Turns out, the person Maggie saw in Mudport was Bob Jakin, who reported that he saw Maggie back to Tom. Maggie comes to ask for Tom's forgiveness and Tom is harsh and tells her that she will never have a home with him. He says that she has disgraced the family and he is ashamed of her and wants nothing to do with her ever again. Maggie is crushed and goes to leave. But her mom comes out and tells Maggie that she will stay with her. Tom gives them some money and says that he'll support them financially and that his mom is welcome whenever. The women head off to Bob Jakin's to rent a room. Bob is kind and understanding and doesn't judge Maggie. He gives her space for a few days. Later, Bob brings in his new baby daughter, named Maggie. Maggie is touched by this. She asks Bob to get Dr. Kenn for her, saying she needs some religious guidance. But Bob informs her that Mrs. Kenn has just died and Maggie tells him not to disturb poor Dr. Kenn. Bob then offers to beat up Stephen for Maggie but Maggie tells him that she doesn't blame Stephen at all. Bob finds this whole forgiveness attitude confusing. Bob leaves his dog with Maggie and goes back out.


prompt:
Chapter: St. Ogg's Passes Judgment

It was soon known throughout St. Ogg's that Miss Tulliver was come
back; she had not, then, eloped in order to be married to Mr. Stephen
Guest,--at all events, Mr. Stephen Guest had not married her; which
came to the same thing, so far as her culpability was concerned. We
judge others according to results; how else?--not knowing the process
by which results are arrived at. If Miss Tulliver, after a few months
of well-chosen travel, had returned as Mrs. Stephen Guest, with a
post-marital _trousseau_, and all the advantages possessed even by the
most unwelcome wife of an only son, public opinion, which at St.
Ogg's, as else where, always knew what to think, would have judged in
strict consistency with those results. Public opinion, in these cases,
is always of the feminine gender,--not the world, but the world's
wife; and she would have seen that two handsome young people--the
gentleman of quite the first family in St. Ogg's--having found
themselves in a false position, had been led into a course which, to
say the least of it, was highly injudicious, and productive of sad
pain and disappointment, especially to that sweet young thing, Miss
Deane. Mr. Stephen Guest had certainly not behaved well; but then,
young men were liable to those sudden infatuated attachments; and bad
as it might seem in Mrs. Stephen Guest to admit the faintest advances
from her cousin's lover (indeed it _had_ been said that she was
actually engaged to young Wakem,--old Wakem himself had mentioned it),
still, she was very young,--"and a deformed young man, you know!--and
young Guest so very fascinating; and, they say, he positively worships
her (to be sure, that can't last!), and he ran away with her in the
boat quite against her will, and what could she do? She couldn't come
back then; no one would have spoken to her; and how very well that
maize-colored satinette becomes her complexion! It seems as if the
folds in front were quite come in; several of her dresses are made
so,--they say he thinks nothing too handsome to buy for her. Poor Miss
Deane! She is very pitiable; but then there was no positive
engagement; and the air at the coast will do her good. After all, if
young Guest felt no more for her than _that_ it was better for her not
to marry him. What a wonderful marriage for a girl like Miss
Tulliver,--quite romantic? Why, young Guest will put up for the
borough at the next election. Nothing like commerce nowadays! That
young Wakem nearly went out of his mind; he always _was_ rather queer;
but he's gone abroad again to be out of the way,--quite the best thing
for a deformed young man. Miss Unit declares she will never visit Mr.
and Mrs. Stephen Guest,--such nonsense! pretending to be better than
other people. Society couldn't be carried on if we inquired into
private conduct in that way,--and Christianity tells us to think no
evil,--and my belief is, that Miss Unit had no cards sent her."

But the results, we know, were not of a kind to warrant this
extenuation of the past. Maggie had returned without a _trousseau_,
without a husband,--in that degraded and outcast condition to which
error is well known to lead; and the world's wife, with that fine
instinct which is given her for the preservation of Society, saw at
once that Miss Tulliver's conduct had been of the most aggravated
kind. Could anything be more detestable? A girl so much indebted to
her friends--whose mother as well as herself had received so much
kindness from the Deanes--to lay the design of winning a young man's
affections away from her own cousin, who had behaved like a sister to
her! Winning his affections? That was not the phrase for such a girl
as Miss Tulliver; it would have been more correct to say that she had
been actuated by mere unwomanly boldness and unbridled passion. There
was always something questionable about her. That connection with
young Wakem, which, they said, had been carried on for years, looked
very ill,--disgusting, in fact! But with a girl of that disposition!
To the world's wife there had always been something in Miss Tulliver's
very _physique_ that a refined instinct felt to be prophetic of harm.
As for poor Mr. Stephen Guest, he was rather pitiable than otherwise;
a young man of five-and-twenty is not to be too severely judged in
these cases,--he is really very much at the mercy of a designing, bold
girl. And it was clear that he had given way in spite of himself: he
had shaken her off as soon as he could; indeed, their having parted so
soon looked very black indeed--_for her_. To be sure, he had written a
letter, laying all the blame on himself, and telling the story in a
romantic fashion so as to try and make her appear quite innocent; of
course he would do that! But the refined instinct of the world's wife
was not to be deceived; providentially!--else what would become of
Society? Why, her own brother had turned her from his door; he had
seen enough, you might be sure, before he would do that. A truly
respectable young man, Mr. Tom Tulliver; quite likely to rise in the
world! His sister's disgrace was naturally a heavy blow to him. It was
to be hoped that she would go out of the neighborhood,--to America, or
anywhere,--so as to purify the air of St. Ogg's from the stain of her
presence, extremely dangerous to daughters there! No good could happen
to her; it was only to be hoped she would repent, and that God would
have mercy on her: He had not the care of society on His hands, as the
world's wife had.

It required nearly a fortnight for fine instinct to assure itself of
these inspirations; indeed, it was a whole week before Stephen's
letter came, telling his father the facts, and adding that he was gone
across to Holland,--had drawn upon the agent at Mudport for
money,--was incapable of any resolution at present.

Maggie, all this while, was too entirely filled with a more agonizing
anxiety to spend any thought on the view that was being taken of her
conduct by the world of St. Ogg's; anxiety about Stephen, Lucy,
Philip, beat on her poor heart in a hard, driving, ceaseless storm of
mingled love, remorse, and pity. If she had thought of rejection and
injustice at all, it would have seemed to her that they had done their
worst; that she could hardly feel any stroke from them intolerable
since the words she had heard from her brother's lips. Across all her
anxiety for the loved and the injured, those words shot again and
again, like a horrible pang that would have brought misery and dread
even into a heaven of delights. The idea of ever recovering happiness
never glimmered in her mind for a moment; it seemed as if every
sensitive fibre in her were too entirely preoccupied by pain ever to
vibrate again to another influence. Life stretched before her as one
act of penitence; and all she craved, as she dwelt on her future lot,
was something to guarantee her from more falling; her own weakness
haunted her like a vision of hideous possibilities, that made no peace
conceivable except such as lay in the sense of a sure refuge.

But she was not without practical intentions; the love of independence
was too strong an inheritance and a habit for her not to remember that
she must get her bread; and when other projects looked vague, she fell
back on that of returning to her plain sewing, and so getting enough
to pay for her lodging at Bob's. She meant to persuade her mother to
return to the Mill by and by, and live with Tom again; and somehow or
other she would maintain herself at St. Ogg's. Dr. Kenn would perhaps
help her and advise her. She remembered his parting words at the
bazaar. She remembered the momentary feeling of reliance that had
sprung in her when he was talking with her, and she waited with
yearning expectation for the opportunity of confiding everything to
him. Her mother called every day at Mr. Deane's to learn how Lucy was;
the report was always sad,--nothing had yet roused her from the feeble
passivity which had come on with the first shock. But of Philip, Mrs.
Tulliver had learned nothing; naturally, no one whom she met would
speak to her about what related to her daughter. But at last she
summoned courage to go and see sister Glegg, who of course would know
everything, and had been even to see Tom at the Mill in Mrs.
Tulliver's absence, though he had said nothing of what had passed on
the occasion.

As soon as her mother was gone, Maggie put on her bonnet. She had
resolved on walking to the Rectory and asking to see Dr. Kenn; he was
in deep grief, but the grief of another does not jar upon us in such
circumstances. It was the first time she had been beyond the door
since her return; nevertheless her mind was so bent on the purpose of
her walk, that the unpleasantness of meeting people on the way, and
being stared at, did not occur to her. But she had no sooner passed
beyond the narrower streets which she had to thread from Bob's
dwelling, than she became aware of unusual glances cast at her; and
this consciousness made her hurry along nervously, afraid to look to
right or left. Presently, however, she came full on Mrs. and Miss
Turnbull, old acquaintances of her family; they both looked at her
strangely, and turned a little aside without speaking. All hard looks
were pain to Maggie, but her self-reproach was too strong for
resentment. No wonder they will not speak to me, she thought; they are
very fond of Lucy. But now she knew that she was about to pass a group
of gentlemen, who were standing at the door of the billiard-rooms, and
she could not help seeing young Torry step out a little with his glass
at his eye, and bow to her with that air of _nonchalance_ which he
might have bestowed on a friendly barmaid.

Maggie's pride was too intense for her not to feel that sting, even in
the midst of her sorrow; and for the first time the thought took
strong hold of her that she would have other obloquy cast on her
besides that which was felt to be due to her breach of faith toward
Lucy. But she was at the Rectory now; there, perhaps, she would find
something else than retribution. Retribution may come from any voice;
the hardest, cruelest, most imbruted urchin at the street-corner can
inflict it; surely help and pity are rarer things, more needful for
the righteous to bestow.

She was shown up at once, after being announced, into Dr. Kenn's
study, where he sat amongst piled-up books, for which he had little
appetite, leaning his cheek against the head of his youngest child, a
girl of three. The child was sent away with the servant, and when the
door was closed, Dr. Kenn said, placing a chair for Maggie,--

"I was coming to see you, Miss Tulliver; you have anticipated me; I am
glad you did."

Maggie looked at him with her childlike directness as she had done at
the bazaar, and said, "I want to tell you everything." But her eyes
filled fast with tears as she said it, and all the pent-up excitement
of her humiliating walk would have its vent before she could say more.

"Do tell me everything," Dr. Kenn said, with quiet kindness in his
grave, firm voice. "Think of me as one to whom a long experience has
been granted, which may enable him to help you."

In rather broken sentences, and with some effort at first, but soon
with the greater ease that came from a sense of relief in the
confidence, Maggie told the brief story of a struggle that must be the
beginning of a long sorrow. Only the day before, Dr. Kenn had been
made acquainted with the contents of Stephen's letter, and he had
believed them at once, without the confirmation of Maggie's statement.
That involuntary plaint of hers, "_Oh, I must go_," had remained with
him as the sign that she was undergoing some inward conflict.

Maggie dwelt the longest on the feeling which had made her come back
to her mother and brother, which made her cling to all the memories of
the past. When she had ended, Dr. Kenn was silent for some minutes;
there was a difficulty on his mind. He rose, and walked up and down
the hearth with his hands behind him. At last he seated himself again,
and said, looking at Maggie,--

"Your prompting to go to your nearest friends,--to remain where all
the ties of your life have been formed,--is a true prompting, to which
the Church in its original constitution and discipline responds,
opening its arms to the penitent, watching over its children to the
last; never abandoning them until they are hopelessly reprobate. And
the Church ought to represent the feeling of the community, so that
every parish should be a family knit together by Christian brotherhood
under a spiritual father. But the ideas of discipline and Christian
fraternity are entirely relaxed,--they can hardly be said to exist in
the public mind; they hardly survive except in the partial,
contradictory form they have taken in the narrow communities of
schismatics; and if I were not supported by the firm faith that the
Church must ultimately recover the full force of that constitution
which is alone fitted to human needs, I should often lose heart at
observing the want of fellowship and sense of mutual responsibility
among my own flock. At present everything seems tending toward the
relaxation of ties,--toward the substitution of wayward choice for the
adherence to obligation, which has its roots in the past. Your
conscience and your heart have given you true light on this point,
Miss Tulliver; and I have said all this that you may know what my wish
about you--what my advice to you--would be, if they sprang from my own
feeling and opinion unmodified by counteracting circumstances."

Dr. Kenn paused a little while. There was an entire absence of
effusive benevolence in his manner; there was something almost cold in
the gravity of his look and voice. If Maggie had not known that his
benevolence was persevering in proportion to its reserve, she might
have been chilled and frightened. As it was, she listened expectantly,
quite sure that there would be some effective help in his words. He
went on.

"Your inexperience of the world, Miss Tulliver, prevents you from
anticipating fully the very unjust conceptions that will probably be
formed concerning your conduct,--conceptions which will have a baneful
effect, even in spite of known evidence to disprove them."

"Oh, I do,--I begin to see," said Maggie, unable to repress this
utterance of her recent pain. "I know I shall be insulted. I shall be
thought worse than I am."

"You perhaps do not yet know," said Dr. Kenn, with a touch of more
personal pity, "that a letter is come which ought to satisfy every one
who has known anything of you, that you chose the steep and difficult
path of a return to the right, at the moment when that return was most
of all difficult."

"Oh, where is he?" said poor Maggie, with a flush and tremor that no
presence could have hindered.

"He is gone abroad; he has written of all that passed to his father.
He has vindicated you to the utmost; and I hope the communication of
that letter to your cousin will have a beneficial effect on her."

Dr. Kenn waited for her to get calm again before he went on.

"That letter, as I said, ought to suffice to prevent false impressions
concerning you. But I am bound to tell you, Miss Tulliver, that not
only the experience of my whole life, but my observation within the
last three days, makes me fear that there is hardly any evidence which
will save you from the painful effect of false imputations. The
persons who are the most incapable of a conscientious struggle such as
yours are precisely those who will be likely to shrink from you,
because they will not believe in your struggle. I fear your life here
will be attended not only with much pain, but with many obstructions.
For this reason--and for this only--I ask you to consider whether it
will not perhaps be better for you to take a situation at a distance,
according to your former intention. I will exert myself at once to
obtain one for you."

"Oh, if I could but stop here!" said Maggie. "I have no heart to begin
a strange life again. I should have no stay. I should feel like a
lonely wanderer, cut off from the past. I have written to the lady who
offered me a situation to excuse myself. If I remained here, I could
perhaps atone in some way to Lucy--to others; I could convince them
that I'm sorry. And," she added, with some of the old proud fire
flashing out, "I will not go away because people say false things of
me. They shall learn to retract them. If I must go away at last,
because--because others wish it, I will not go now."

"Well," said Dr. Kenn, after some consideration, "if you determine on
that, Miss Tulliver, you may rely on all the influence my position
gives me. I am bound to aid and countenance you by the very duties of
my office as a parish priest. I will add, that personally I have a
deep interest in your peace of mind and welfare."

"The only thing I want is some occupation that will enable me to get
my bread and be independent," said Maggie. "I shall not want much. I
can go on lodging where I am."

"I must think over the subject maturely," said Dr. Kenn, "and in a few
days I shall be better able to ascertain the general feeling. I shall
come to see you; I shall bear you constantly in mind."

When Maggie had left him, Dr. Kenn stood ruminating with his hands
behind him, and his eyes fixed on the carpet, under a painful sense of
doubt and difficulty. The tone of Stephen's letter, which he had read,
and the actual relations of all the persons concerned, forced upon him
powerfully the idea of an ultimate marriage between Stephen and Maggie
as the least evil; and the impossibility of their proximity in St.
Ogg's on any other supposition, until after years of separation, threw
an insurmountable prospective difficulty over Maggie's stay there. On
the other hand, he entered with all the comprehension of a man who had
known spiritual conflict, and lived through years of devoted service
to his fellow-men, into that state of Maggie's heart and conscience
which made the consent to the marriage a desecration to her; her
conscience must not be tampered with; the principle on which she had
acted was a safer guide than any balancing of consequences. His
experience told him that intervention was too dubious a responsibility
to be lightly incurred; the possible issue either of an endeavor to
restore the former relations with Lucy and Philip, or of counselling
submission to this irruption of a new feeling, was hidden in a
darkness all the more impenetrable because each immediate step was
clogged with evil.

The great problem of the shifting relation between passion and duty is
clear to no man who is capable of apprehending it; the question
whether the moment has come in which a man has fallen below the
possibility of a renunciation that will carry any efficacy, and must
accept the sway of a passion against which he had struggled as a
trespass, is one for which we have no master-key that will fit all
cases. The casuists have become a byword of reproach; but their
perverted spirit of minute discrimination was the shadow of a truth to
which eyes and hearts are too often fatally sealed,--the truth, that
moral judgments must remain false and hollow, unless they are checked
and enlightened by a perpetual reference to the special circumstances
that mark the individual lot.

All people of broad, strong sense have an instinctive repugnance to
the men of maxims; because such people early discern that the
mysterious complexity of our life is not to be embraced by maxims, and
that to lace ourselves up in formulas of that sort is to repress all
the divine promptings and inspirations that spring from growing
insight and sympathy. And the man of maxims is the popular
representative of the minds that are guided in their moral judgment
solely by general rules, thinking that these will lead them to justice
by a ready-made patent method, without the trouble of exerting
patience, discrimination, impartiality,--without any care to assure
themselves whether they have the insight that comes from a hardly
earned estimate of temptation, or from a life vivid and intense enough
to have created a wide fellow-feeling with all that is human.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The narrator gives a run-down of St. Ogg's society. It's a town ruled by gossip and a lot of prejudiced and judgmental minds. The women of St. Ogg's are particularly vicious gossips. We get a hypothetical, what-if situation: if Maggie had actually married Stephen, people would have been shocked, but would have quickly gotten over it and would have accepted Maggie as Mrs. Guest in due course. In fact, Stephen would be seen as the one at fault, effectively kidnapping Maggie and giving her no choice but to marry him. But in reality, Maggie was blamed for the entire scandal. The gossips insisted that Maggie seduced Stephen and led him astray and that she was a scandalous woman with no morals at all. Marriage would have retroactively made the elopement OK. But Maggie's refusal to marry Stephen is scandalous. Stephen has gone to the Netherlands and writes a letter to his sisters explaining what happened and taking the blame for everything. But it doesn't help and the town still blames Maggie. The rumor mill goes out of control for two weeks and Maggie never leaves the Jakins' house. Maggie is hugely depressed and thinks the rest of her life will be utterly miserable. Mrs. Tulliver gives Maggie reports on Lucy, but she knows nothing of Stephen or Philip. Maggie finally goes out to see Dr. Kenn for advice and help finding a job. On her way to Dr. Kenn's place, Maggie encounters a lot of her acquaintances, who shun her. Dr. Kenn greets Maggie kindly and she tells him the whole story. He praises her for doing what she felt was right, even though it is unpopular and hard. He warns Maggie that she'll have to deal with a lot from now on and tells her about Stephen's letter. Dr. Kenn suggests that Maggie might want to leave St. Ogg's and start over somewhere else. Maggie echoes her father though, and says that she can't bear to leave her home and start over again. She is determined to stay. Dr. Kenn says he'll try to help her find a job then. After she leaves, Dr. Kenn ponders her difficult situation and wonders how to help her. He hopes that she can reconcile with some of her friends and family. He also worries about how the town will continue to treat Maggie.


prompt:
Chapter: Showing That Old Acquaintances Are Capable of Surprising Us

When Maggie was at home again, her mother brought her news of an
unexpected line of conduct in aunt Glegg. As long as Maggie had not
been heard of, Mrs. Glegg had half closed her shutters and drawn down
her blinds. She felt assured that Maggie was drowned; that was far
more probable than that her niece and legatee should have done
anything to wound the family honor in the tenderest point. When at
last she learned from Tom that Maggie had come home, and gathered from
him what was her explanation of her absence, she burst forth in severe
reproof of Tom for admitting the worst of his sister until he was
compelled. If you were not to stand by your "kin" as long as there was
a shred of honor attributable to them, pray what were you to stand by?
Lightly to admit conduct in one of your own family that would force
you to alter your will, had never been the way of the Dodsons; and
though Mrs. Glegg had always augured ill of Maggie's future at a time
when other people were perhaps less clear-sighted, yet fair play was a
jewel, and it was not for her own friends to help to rob the girl of
her fair fame, and to cast her out from family shelter to the scorn of
the outer world, until she had become unequivocally a family disgrace.
The circumstances were unprecedented in Mrs. Glegg's experience;
nothing of that kind had happened among the Dodsons before; but it was
a case in which her hereditary rectitude and personal strength of
character found a common channel along with her fundamental ideas of
clanship, as they did in her lifelong regard to equity in money
matters. She quarrelled with Mr. Glegg, whose kindness, flowing
entirely into compassion for Lucy, made him as hard in his judgment of
Maggie as Mr. Deane himself was; and fuming against her sister
Tulliver because she did not at once come to her for advice and help,
shut herself up in her own room with Baxter's "Saints' Rest" from
morning till night, denying herself to all visitors, till Mr. Glegg
brought from Mr. Deane the news of Stephen's letter. Then Mrs. Glegg
felt that she had adequate fighting-ground; then she laid aside
Baxter, and was ready to meet all comers. While Mrs. Pullet could do
nothing but shake her head and cry, and wish that cousin Abbot had
died, or any number of funerals had happened rather than this, which
had never happened before, so that there was no knowing how to act,
and Mrs. Pullet could never enter St. Ogg's again, because
"acquaintances" knew of it all, Mrs. Glegg only hoped that Mrs. Wooll,
or any one else, would come to her with their false tales about her
own niece, and she would know what to say to that ill-advised person!

Again she had a scene of remonstrance with Tom, all the more severe in
proportion to the greater strength of her present position. But Tom,
like other immovable things, seemed only the more rigidly fixed under
that attempt to shake him. Poor Tom! he judged by what he had been
able to see; and the judgment was painful enough to himself. He
thought he had the demonstration of facts observed through years by
his own eyes, which gave no warning of their imperfection, that
Maggie's nature was utterly untrustworthy, and too strongly marked
with evil tendencies to be safely treated with leniency. He would act
on that demonstration at any cost; but the thought of it made his days
bitter to him. Tom, like every one of us, was imprisoned within the
limits of his own nature, and his education had simply glided over
him, leaving a slight deposit of polish; if you are inclined to be
severe on his severity, remember that the responsibility of tolerance
lies with those who have the wider vision. There had arisen in Tom a
repulsion toward Maggie that derived its very intensity from their
early childish love in the time when they had clasped tiny fingers
together, and their later sense of nearness in a common duty and a
common sorrow; the sight of her, as he had told her, was hateful to
him. In this branch of the Dodson family aunt Glegg found a stronger
nature than her own; a nature in which family feeling had lost the
character of clanship by taking on a doubly deep dye of personal
pride.

Mrs. Glegg allowed that Maggie ought to be punished,--she was not a
woman to deny that; she knew what conduct was,--but punished in
proportion to the misdeeds proved against her, not to those which were
cast upon her by people outside her own family who might wish to show
that their own kin were better.

"Your aunt Glegg scolded me so as niver was, my dear," said poor Mrs.
Tulliver, when she came back to Maggie, "as I didn't go to her before;
she said it wasn't for her to come to me first. But she spoke like a
sister, too; _having_ she allays was, and hard to please,--oh
dear!--but she's said the kindest word as has ever been spoke by you
yet, my child. For she says, for all she's been so set again' having
one extry in the house, and making extry spoons and things, and
putting her about in her ways, you shall have a shelter in her house,
if you'll go to her dutiful, and she'll uphold you against folks as
say harm of you when they've no call. And I told her I thought you
couldn't bear to see anybody but me, you were so beat down with
trouble; but she said, '_I_ won't throw ill words at her; there's them
out o' th' family 'ull be ready enough to do that. But I'll give her
good advice; an' she must be humble.' It's wonderful o' Jane; for I'm
sure she used to throw everything I did wrong at me,--if it was the
raisin-wine as turned out bad, or the pies too hot, or whativer it
was."

"Oh, mother," said poor Maggie, shrinking from the thought of all the
contact her bruised mind would have to bear, "tell her I'm very
grateful; I'll go to see her as soon as I can; but I can't see any one
just yet, except Dr. Kenn. I've been to him,--he will advise me, and
help me to get some occupation. I can't live with any one, or be
dependent on them, tell aunt Glegg; I must get my own bread. But did
you hear nothing of Philip--Philip Wakem? Have you never seen any one
that has mentioned him?"

"No, my dear; but I've been to Lucy's, and I saw your uncle, and he
says they got her to listen to the letter, and she took notice o' Miss
Guest, and asked questions, and the doctor thinks she's on the turn to
be better. What a world this is,--what trouble, oh dear! The law was
the first beginning, and it's gone from bad to worse, all of a sudden,
just when the luck seemed on the turn?" This was the first lamentation
that Mrs. Tulliver had let slip to Maggie, but old habit had been
revived by the interview with sister Glegg.

"My poor, poor mother!" Maggie burst out, cut to the heart with pity
and compunction, and throwing her arms round her mother's neck; "I was
always naughty and troublesome to you. And now you might have been
happy if it hadn't been for me."

"Eh, my dear," said Mrs. Tulliver, leaning toward the warm young
cheek; "I must put up wi' my children,--I shall never have no more;
and if they bring me bad luck, I must be fond on it. There's nothing
else much to be fond on, for my furnitur' went long ago. And you'd got
to be very good once; I can't think how it's turned out the wrong way
so!"

Still two or three more days passed, and Maggie heard nothing of
Philip; anxiety about him was becoming her predominant trouble, and
she summoned courage at last to inquire about him of Dr. Kenn, on his
next visit to her. He did not even know if Philip was at home. The
elder Wakem was made moody by an accumulation of annoyance; the
disappointment in this young Jetsome, to whom, apparently, he was a
good deal attached, had been followed close by the catastrophe to his
son's hopes after he had done violence to his own strong feeling by
conceding to them, and had incautiously mentioned this concession in
St. Ogg's; and he was almost fierce in his brusqueness when any one
asked him a question about his son.

But Philip could hardly have been ill, or it would have been known
through the calling in of the medical man; it was probable that he was
gone out of the town for a little while. Maggie sickened under this
suspense, and her imagination began to live more and more persistently
in what Philip was enduring. What did he believe about her?

At last Bob brought her a letter, without a postmark, directed in a
hand which she knew familiarly in the letters of her own name,--a hand
in which her name had been written long ago, in a pocket Shakespeare
which she possessed. Her mother was in the room, and Maggie, in
violent agitation, hurried upstairs that she might read the letter in
solitude. She read it with a throbbing brow.

  "Maggie,--I believe in you; I know you never meant to deceive me; I
  know you tried to keep faith to me and to all. I believed this
  before I had any other evidence of it than your own nature. The
  night after I last parted from you I suffered torments. I had seen
  what convinced me that you were not free; that there was another
  whose presence had a power over you which mine never possessed; but
  through all the suggestions--almost murderous suggestions--of rage
  and jealousy, my mind made its way to believe in your truthfulness.
  I was sure that you meant to cleave to me, as you had said; that
  you had rejected him; that you struggled to renounce him, for
  Lucy's sake and for mine. But I could see no issue that was not
  fatal for _you;_ and that dread shut out the very thought of
  resignation. I foresaw that he would not relinquish you, and I
  believed then, as I believe now, that the strong attraction which
  drew you together proceeded only from one side of your characters,
  and belonged to that partial, divided action of our nature which
  makes half the tragedy of the human lot. I have felt the vibration
  of chords in your nature that I have continually felt the want of
  in his. But perhaps I am wrong; perhaps I feel about you as the
  artist does about the scene over which his soul has brooded with
  love; he would tremble to see it confided to other hands; he would
  never believe that it could bear for another all the meaning and
  the beauty it bears for him.

  "I dared not trust myself to see you that morning; I was filled
  with selfish passion; I was shattered by a night of conscious
  delirium. I told you long ago that I had never been resigned even
  to the mediocrity of my powers; how could I be resigned to the loss
  of the one thing which had ever come to me on earth with the
  promise of such deep joy as would give a new and blessed meaning to
  the foregoing pain,--the promise of another self that would lift my
  aching affection into the divine rapture of an ever-springing,
  ever-satisfied want?

  "But the miseries of that night had prepared me for what came
  before the next. It was no surprise to me. I was certain that he
  had prevailed on you to sacrifice everything to him, and I waited
  with equal certainty to hear of your marriage. I measured your love
  and his by my own. But I was wrong, Maggie. There is something
  stronger in you than your love for him.

  "I will not tell you what I went through in that interval. But even
  in its utmost agony--even in those terrible throes that love must
  suffer before it can be disembodied of selfish desire--my love for
  you sufficed to withhold me from suicide, without the aid of any
  other motive. In the midst of my egoism, I yet could not bear to
  come like a death-shadow across the feast of your joy. I could not
  bear to forsake the world in which you still lived and might need
  me; it was part of the faith I had vowed to you,--to wait and
  endure. Maggie, that is a proof of what I write now to assure you
  of,--that no anguish I have had to bear on your account has been
  too heavy a price to pay for the new life into which I have entered
  in loving you. I want you to put aside all grief because of the
  grief you have caused me. I was nurtured in the sense of privation;
  I never expected happiness; and in knowing you, in loving you, I
  have had, and still have, what reconciles me to life. You have been
  to my affections what light, what color is to my eyes, what music
  is to the inward ear, you have raised a dim unrest into a vivid
  consciousness. The new life I have found in caring for your joy and
  sorrow more than for what is directly my own, has transformed the
  spirit of rebellious murmuring into that willing endurance which is
  the birth of strong sympathy. I think nothing but such complete and
  intense love could have initiated me into that enlarged life which
  grows and grows by appropriating the life of others; for before, I
  was always dragged back from it by ever-present painful
  self-consciousness. I even think sometimes that this gift of
  transferred life which has come to me in loving you, may be a new
  power to me.

  "Then, dear one, in spite of all, you have been the blessing of my
  life. Let no self-reproach weigh on you because of me. It is I who
  should rather reproach myself for having urged my feelings upon
  you, and hurried you into words that you have felt as fetters. You
  meant to be true to those words; you _have_ been true. I can
  measure your sacrifice by what I have known in only one half-hour
  of your presence with me, when I dreamed that you might love me
  best. But, Maggie, I have no just claim on you for more than
  affectionate remembrance.

  "For some time I have shrunk from writing to you, because I have
  shrunk even from the appearance of wishing to thrust myself before
  you, and so repeating my original error. But you will not
  misconstrue me. I know that we must keep apart for a long while;
  cruel tongues would force us apart, if nothing else did. But I
  shall not go away. The place where you are is the one where my mind
  must live, wherever I might travel. And remember that I am
  unchangeably yours,--yours not with selfish wishes, but with a
  devotion that excludes such wishes.

  "God comfort you, my loving, large-souled Maggie. If every one else
  has misconceived you, remember that you have never been doubted by
  him whose heart recognized you ten years ago.

  "Do not believe any one who says I am ill, because I am not seen
  out of doors. I have only had nervous headaches,--no worse than I
  have sometimes had them before. But the overpowering heat inclines
  me to be perfectly quiescent in the daytime. I am strong enough to
  obey any word which shall tell me that I can serve you by word or
  deed.

                          "Yours to the last,
                           "_Philip Wakem_."

As Maggie knelt by the bed sobbing, with that letter pressed under
her, her feelings again and again gathered themselves in a whispered
cry, always in the same words,--

"O God, is there any happiness in love that could make me forget
_their_ pain?"

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The unexpected behavior comes from none other than Mrs. Glegg. Mrs. Tulliver reports on this to Maggie. Turns out that Mrs. Glegg heard about everything from Tom and tells him off for thinking so badly of his sister. Mrs. Glegg says that family needs to stick together and that Maggie is family first and foremost. She refuses to believe the worst of Maggie and even gets into an argument with Mr. Glegg, who has taken Lucy's side in the whole thing. After hearing of Stephen's letter Mrs. Glegg feels vindicated and tells off anyone who doubts Maggie's honor. Aunt Pullet is totally distraught and has no idea how to act since nothing like this has ever happened to the family before. Mrs. Glegg goes after Tom again after Stephen's letter arrives. Tom won't budge, though, and sticks to his bad opinion of Maggie. Mrs. Glegg feels that Maggie should be punished but in proportion to the actual crime and should be punished by the family, not by outsiders who don't know what's going on. Mrs. Tulliver tells Maggie that Mrs. Glegg has invited her to live at the Gleggs' house. Maggie is very grateful but insists that she needs to make her own way in the world now. A few days go by and finally Maggie receives a letter from Philip. This letter is epic. Philip tells Maggie that he believes in her and that he still loves her and doesn't blame her for anything. He understands that they had a weird situation and made hasty promises to each other when they were young. Philip tells Maggie that loving her was the best thing that has ever happened to him and he doesn't regret it at all. He tells her he forgives her everything and hopes she'll be happy and not to worry about him. Maggie does what anyone with a heart would do after reading a letter like that: cries.


prompt:
Chapter: Maggie and Lucy

By the end of the week Dr. Kenn had made up his mind that there was
only one way in which he could secure to Maggie a suitable living at
St. Ogg's. Even with his twenty years' experience as a parish priest,
he was aghast at the obstinate continuance of imputations against her
in the face of evidence. Hitherto he had been rather more adored and
appealed to than was quite agreeable to him; but now, in attempting to
open the ears of women to reason, and their consciences to justice, on
behalf of Maggie Tulliver, he suddenly found himself as powerless as
he was aware he would have been if he had attempted to influence the
shape of bonnets. Dr. Kenn could not be contradicted; he was listened
to in silence; but when he left the room, a comparison of opinions
among his hearers yielded much the same result as before. Miss
Tulliver had undeniably acted in a blamable manner, even Dr. Kenn did
not deny that; how, then, could he think so lightly of her as to put
that favorable interpretation on everything she had done? Even on the
supposition that required the utmost stretch of belief,--namely, that
none of the things said about Miss Tulliver were true,--still, since
they _had_ been said about her, they had cast an odor round her which
must cause her to be shrunk from by every woman who had to take care
of her own reputation--and of Society. To have taken Maggie by the
hand and said, "I will not believe unproved evil of you; my lips shall
not utter it; my ears shall be closed against it; I, too, am an erring
mortal, liable to stumble, apt to come short of my most earnest
efforts; your lot has been harder than mine, your temptation greater;
let us help each other to stand and walk without more falling,"--to
have done this would have demanded courage, deep pity, self-knowledge,
generous trust; would have demanded a mind that tasted no piquancy in
evil-speaking, that felt no self-exaltation in condemning, that
cheated itself with no large words into the belief that life can have
any moral end, any high religion, which excludes the striving after
perfect truth, justice, and love toward the individual men and women
who come across our own path. The ladies of St. Ogg's were not
beguiled by any wide speculative conceptions; but they had their
favorite abstraction, called Society, which served to make their
consciences perfectly easy in doing what satisfied their own
egoism,--thinking and speaking the worst of Maggie Tulliver, and
turning their backs upon her. It was naturally disappointing to Dr.
Kenn, after two years of superfluous incense from his feminine
parishioners, to find them suddenly maintaining their views in
opposition to his; but then they maintained them in opposition to a
higher Authority, which they had venerated longer. That Authority had
furnished a very explicit answer to persons who might inquire where
their social duties began, and might be inclined to take wide views as
to the starting-point. The answer had not turned on the ultimate good
of Society, but on "a certain man" who was found in trouble by the
wayside.

Not that St. Ogg's was empty of women with some tenderness of heart
and conscience; probably it had as fair a proportion of human goodness
in it as any other small trading town of that day. But until every
good man is brave, we must expect to find many good women timid,--too
timid even to believe in the correctness of their own best promptings,
when these would place them in a minority. And the men at St. Ogg's
were not all brave, by any means; some of them were even fond of
scandal, and to an extent that might have given their conversation an
effeminate character, if it had not been distinguished by masculine
jokes, and by an occasional shrug of the shoulders at the mutual
hatred of women. It was the general feeling of the masculine mind at
St. Ogg's that women were not to be interfered with in their treatment
of each other.

And thus every direction in which Dr. Kenn had turned, in the hope of
procuring some kind recognition and some employment for Maggie, proved
a disappointment to him. Mrs. James Torry could not think of taking
Maggie as a nursery governess, even temporarily,--a young woman about
whom "such things had been said," and about whom "gentlemen joked";
and Miss Kirke, who had a spinal complaint, and wanted a reader and
companion, felt quite sure that Maggie's mind must be of a quality
with which she, for her part, could not risk _any_ contact. Why did
not Miss Tulliver accept the shelter offered her by her aunt Glegg? It
did not become a girl like her to refuse it. Or else, why did she not
go out of the neighborhood, and get a situation where she was not
known? (It was not, apparently, of so much importance that she should
carry her dangerous tendencies into strange families unknown at St.
Ogg's.) She must be very bold and hardened to wish to stay in a parish
where she was so much stared at and whispered about.

Dr. Kenn, having great natural firmness, began, in the presence of
this opposition, as every firm man would have done, to contract a
certain strength of determination over and above what would have been
called forth by the end in view. He himself wanted a daily governess
for his younger children; and though he had hesitated in the first
instance to offer this position to Maggie, the resolution to protest
with the utmost force of his personal and priestly character against
her being crushed and driven away by slander, was now decisive. Maggie
gratefully accepted an employment that gave her duties as well as a
support; her days would be filled now, and solitary evenings would be
a welcome rest. She no longer needed the sacrifice her mother made in
staying with her, and Mrs. Tulliver was persuaded to go back to the
Mill.

But now it began to be discovered that Dr. Kenn, exemplary as he had
hitherto appeared, had his crotchets, possibly his weaknesses. The
masculine mind of St. Ogg's smiled pleasantly, and did not wonder that
Kenn liked to see a fine pair of eyes daily, or that he was inclined
to take so lenient a view of the past; the feminine mind, regarded at
that period as less powerful, took a more melancholy view of the case.
If Dr. Kenn should be beguiled into marrying that Miss Tulliver! It
was not safe to be too confident, even about the best of men; an
apostle had fallen, and wept bitterly afterwards; and though Peter's
denial was not a close precedent, his repentance was likely to be.

Maggie had not taken her daily walks to the Rectory for many weeks,
before the dreadful possibility of her some time or other becoming the
Rector's wife had been talked of so often in confidence, that ladies
were beginning to discuss how they should behave to her in that
position. For Dr. Kenn, it had been understood, had sat in the
schoolroom half an hour one morning, when Miss Tulliver was giving her
lessons,--nay, he had sat there every morning; he had once walked home
with her,--he almost _always_ walked home with her,--and if not, he
went to see her in the evening. What an artful creature she was! What
a _mother_ for those children! It was enough to make poor Mrs. Kenn
turn in her grave, that they should be put under the care of this girl
only a few weeks after her death. Would he be so lost to propriety as
to marry her before the year was out? The masculine mind was
sarcastic, and thought _not_.

The Miss Guests saw an alleviation to the sorrow of witnessing a folly
in their Rector; at least their brother would be safe; and their
knowledge of Stephen's tenacity was a constant ground of alarm to
them, lest he should come back and marry Maggie. They were not among
those who disbelieved their brother's letter; but they had no
confidence in Maggie's adherence to her renunciation of him; they
suspected that she had shrunk rather from the elopement than from the
marriage, and that she lingered in St. Ogg's, relying on his return to
her. They had always thought her disagreeable; they now thought her
artful and proud; having quite as good grounds for that judgment as
you and I probably have for many strong opinions of the same kind.
Formerly they had not altogether delighted in the contemplated match
with Lucy, but now their dread of a marriage between Stephen and
Maggie added its momentum to their genuine pity and indignation on
behalf of the gentle forsaken girl, in making them desire that he
should return to her. As soon as Lucy was able to leave home, she was
to seek relief from the oppressive heat of this August by going to the
coast with the Miss Guests; and it was in their plans that Stephen
should be induced to join them. On the very first hint of gossip
concerning Maggie and Dr. Kenn, the report was conveyed in Miss
Guest's letter to her brother.

Maggie had frequent tidings through her mother, or aunt Glegg, or Dr.
Kenn, of Lucy's gradual progress toward recovery, and her thoughts
tended continually toward her uncle Deane's house; she hungered for an
interview with Lucy, if it were only for five minutes, to utter a word
of penitence, to be assured by Lucy's own eyes and lips that she did
not believe in the willing treachery of those whom she had loved and
trusted. But she knew that even if her uncle's indignation had not
closed his house against her, the agitation of such an interview would
have been forbidden to Lucy. Only to have seen her without speaking
would have been some relief; for Maggie was haunted by a face cruel in
its very gentleness; a face that had been turned on hers with glad,
sweet looks of trust and love from the twilight time of memory;
changed now to a sad and weary face by a first heart-stroke. And as
the days passed on, that pale image became more and more distinct; the
picture grew and grew into more speaking definiteness under the
avenging hand of remorse; the soft hazel eyes, in their look of pain,
were bent forever on Maggie, and pierced her the more because she
could see no anger in them. But Lucy was not yet able to go to church,
or any place where Maggie could see her; and even the hope of that
departed, when the news was told her by aunt Glegg, that Lucy was
really going away in a few days to Scarborough with the Miss Guests,
who had been heard to say that they expected their brother to meet
them there.

Only those who have known what hardest inward conflict is, can know
what Maggie felt as she sat in her loneliness the evening after
hearing that news from Mrs. Glegg,--only those who have known what it
is to dread their own selfish desires as the watching mother would
dread the sleeping-potion that was to still her own pain.

She sat without candle in the twilight, with the window wide open
toward the river; the sense of oppressive heat adding itself
undistinguishably to the burthen of her lot. Seated on a chair against
the window, with her arm on the windowsill she was looking blankly at
the flowing river, swift with the backward-rushing tide, struggling to
see still the sweet face in its unreproaching sadness, that seemed now
from moment to moment to sink away and be hidden behind a form that
thrust itself between, and made darkness. Hearing the door open, she
thought Mrs. Jakin was coming in with her supper, as usual; and with
that repugnance to trivial speech which comes with languor and
wretchedness, she shrank from turning round and saying she wanted
nothing; good little Mrs. Jakin would be sure to make some well-meant
remarks. But the next moment, without her having discerned the sound
of a footstep, she felt a light hand on her shoulder, and heard a
voice close to her saying, "Maggie!"

The face was there,--changed, but all the sweeter; the hazel eyes were
there, with their heart-piercing tenderness.

"Maggie!" the soft voice said. "Lucy!" answered a voice with a sharp
ring of anguish in it; and Lucy threw her arms round Maggie's neck,
and leaned her pale cheek against the burning brow.

"I stole out," said Lucy, almost in a whisper, while she sat down
close to Maggie and held her hand, "when papa and the rest were away.
Alice is come with me. I asked her to help me. But I must only stay a
little while, because it is so late."

It was easier to say that at first than to say anything else. They sat
looking at each other. It seemed as if the interview must end without
more speech, for speech was very difficult. Each felt that there would
be something scorching in the words that would recall the
irretrievable wrong. But soon, as Maggie looked, every distinct
thought began to be overflowed by a wave of loving penitence, and
words burst forth with a sob.

"God bless you for coming, Lucy."

The sobs came thick on each other after that.

"Maggie, dear, be comforted," said Lucy now, putting her cheek against
Maggie's again. "Don't grieve." And she sat still, hoping to soothe
Maggie with that gentle caress.

"I didn't mean to deceive you, Lucy," said Maggie, as soon as she
could speak. "It always made me wretched that I felt what I didn't
like you to know. It was because I thought it would all be conquered,
and you might never see anything to wound you."

"I know, dear," said Lucy. "I know you never meant to make me unhappy.
It is a trouble that has come on us all; you have more to bear than I
have--and you gave him up, when--you did what it must have been very
hard to do."

They were silent again a little while, sitting with clasped hands, and
cheeks leaned together.

"Lucy," Maggie began again, "_he_ struggled too. He wanted to be true
to you. He will come back to you. Forgive him--he will be happy
then----"

These words were wrung forth from Maggie's deepest soul, with an
effort like the convulsed clutch of a drowning man. Lucy trembled and
was silent.

A gentle knock came at the door. It was Alice, the maid, who entered
and said,--

"I daren't stay any longer, Miss Deane. They'll find it out, and
there'll be such anger at your coming out so late."

Lucy rose and said, "Very well, Alice,--in a minute."

"I'm to go away on Friday, Maggie," she added, when Alice had closed
the door again. "When I come back, and am strong, they will let me do
as I like. I shall come to you when I please then."

"Lucy," said Maggie, with another great effort, "I pray to God
continually that I may never be the cause of sorrow to you any more."

She pressed the little hand that she held between hers, and looked up
into the face that was bent over hers. Lucy never forgot that look.

"Maggie," she said, in a low voice, that had the solemnity of
confession in it, "you are better than I am. I can't----"

She broke off there, and said no more. But they clasped each other
again in a last embrace.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Dr. Kenn is appalled at the awful behavior of the people of St. Ogg's towards Maggie. He tries to explain the situation to people and no one listens to him. He also has no luck in finding Maggie a job since no one will hire her. The town wishes Maggie would either go live with Mrs. Glegg, who actually seemed to want her, or to just leave the town entirely. So Dr. Kenn finally hires Maggie to work as a governess for his own kids. Mrs. Tulliver goes back to live at the Mill again. This causes a new scandal though - everyone in town becomes convinced that Maggie has seduced Dr. Kenn and is making a move on him now that his wife has died. Not everyone buys this, though. Stephen's sisters are convinced that Maggie is still after him for his money. They write to Stephen about the scandal with Dr. Kenn, hoping Stephen will give Maggie up. Lucy meanwhile takes a vacation with Stephen's sisters. But the night before she leaves, Lucy sneaks out to see Maggie. Lucy tells Maggie that she forgives her and the two reconcile. Maggie tells Lucy to try to forgive Stephen and the two tearfully part as friends.