Chapter: "Du Erde warst auch diese Nacht bestandig,
     Und athmest neu erquickt zu meinen Fussen,
     Beginnest schon mit Lust mich zu umgeben,
     Zum regst und ruhrst ein kraftiges Reschliessen
     Zum hochsten Dasein immerfort zu streben.
                                   --Faust: 2r Theil.


When Dorothea was again at Lydgate's door speaking to Martha, he was in
the room close by with the door ajar, preparing to go out.  He heard
her voice, and immediately came to her.

"Do you think that Mrs. Lydgate can receive me this morning?" she said,
having reflected that it would be better to leave out all allusion to
her previous visit.

"I have no doubt she will," said Lydgate, suppressing his thought about
Dorothea's looks, which were as much changed as Rosamond's, "if you
will be kind enough to come in and let me tell her that you are here.
She has not been very well since you were here yesterday, but she is
better this morning, and I think it is very likely that she will be
cheered by seeing you again."

It was plain that Lydgate, as Dorothea had expected, knew nothing about
the circumstances of her yesterday's visit; nay, he appeared to imagine
that she had carried it out according to her intention.  She had
prepared a little note asking Rosamond to see her, which she would have
given to the servant if he had not been in the way, but now she was in
much anxiety as to the result of his announcement.

After leading her into the drawing-room, he paused to take a letter
from his pocket and put it into her hands, saying, "I wrote this last
night, and was going to carry it to Lowick in my ride.  When one is
grateful for something too good for common thanks, writing is less
unsatisfactory than speech--one does not at least _hear_ how inadequate
the words are."

Dorothea's face brightened.  "It is I who have most to thank for, since
you have let me take that place.  You _have_ consented?" she said,
suddenly doubting.

"Yes, the check is going to Bulstrode to-day."

He said no more, but went up-stairs to Rosamond, who had but lately
finished dressing herself, and sat languidly wondering what she should
do next, her habitual industry in small things, even in the days of her
sadness, prompting her to begin some kind of occupation, which she
dragged through slowly or paused in from lack of interest.  She looked
ill, but had recovered her usual quietude of manner, and Lydgate had
feared to disturb her by any questions.  He had told her of Dorothea's
letter containing the check, and afterwards he had said, "Ladislaw is
come, Rosy; he sat with me last night; I dare say he will be here again
to-day. I thought he looked rather battered and depressed."  And
Rosamond had made no reply.

Now, when he came up, he said to her very gently, "Rosy, dear, Mrs.
Casaubon is come to see you again; you would like to see her, would you
not?"  That she colored and gave rather a startled movement did not
surprise him after the agitation produced by the interview yesterday--a
beneficent agitation, he thought, since it seemed to have made her turn
to him again.

Rosamond dared not say no.  She dared not with a tone of her voice
touch the facts of yesterday.  Why had Mrs. Casaubon come again?  The
answer was a blank which Rosamond could only fill up with dread, for
Will Ladislaw's lacerating words had made every thought of Dorothea a
fresh smart to her.  Nevertheless, in her new humiliating uncertainty
she dared do nothing but comply.  She did not say yes, but she rose and
let Lydgate put a light shawl over her shoulders, while he said, "I am
going out immediately." Then something crossed her mind which prompted
her to say, "Pray tell Martha not to bring any one else into the
drawing-room." And Lydgate assented, thinking that he fully understood
this wish.  He led her down to the drawing-room door, and then turned
away, observing to himself that he was rather a blundering husband to
be dependent for his wife's trust in him on the influence of another
woman.

Rosamond, wrapping her soft shawl around her as she walked towards
Dorothea, was inwardly wrapping her soul in cold reserve.  Had Mrs.
Casaubon come to say anything to her about Will?  If so, it was a
liberty that Rosamond resented; and she prepared herself to meet every
word with polite impassibility.  Will had bruised her pride too sorely
for her to feel any compunction towards him and Dorothea: her own
injury seemed much the greater.  Dorothea was not only the "preferred"
woman, but had also a formidable advantage in being Lydgate's
benefactor; and to poor Rosamond's pained confused vision it seemed
that this Mrs. Casaubon--this woman who predominated in all things
concerning her--must have come now with the sense of having the
advantage, and with animosity prompting her to use it.  Indeed, not
Rosamond only, but any one else, knowing the outer facts of the case,
and not the simple inspiration on which Dorothea acted, might well have
wondered why she came.

Looking like the lovely ghost of herself, her graceful slimness wrapped
in her soft white shawl, the rounded infantine mouth and cheek
inevitably suggesting mildness and innocence, Rosamond paused at three
yards' distance from her visitor and bowed.  But Dorothea, who had
taken off her gloves, from an impulse which she could never resist when
she wanted a sense of freedom, came forward, and with her face full of
a sad yet sweet openness, put out her hand.  Rosamond could not avoid
meeting her glance, could not avoid putting her small hand into
Dorothea's, which clasped it with gentle motherliness; and immediately
a doubt of her own prepossessions began to stir within her.  Rosamond's
eye was quick for faces; she saw that Mrs. Casaubon's face looked pale
and changed since yesterday, yet gentle, and like the firm softness of
her hand.  But Dorothea had counted a little too much on her own
strength: the clearness and intensity of her mental action this morning
were the continuance of a nervous exaltation which made her frame as
dangerously responsive as a bit of finest Venetian crystal; and in
looking at Rosamond, she suddenly found her heart swelling, and was
unable to speak--all her effort was required to keep back tears.  She
succeeded in that, and the emotion only passed over her face like the
spirit of a sob; but it added to Rosamond's impression that Mrs.
Casaubon's state of mind must be something quite different from what
she had imagined.

So they sat down without a word of preface on the two chairs that
happened to be nearest, and happened also to be close together; though
Rosamond's notion when she first bowed was that she should stay a long
way off from Mrs. Casaubon.  But she ceased thinking how anything would
turn out--merely wondering what would come.  And Dorothea began to
speak quite simply, gathering firmness as she went on.

"I had an errand yesterday which I did not finish; that is why I am
here again so soon.  You will not think me too troublesome when I tell
you that I came to talk to you about the injustice that has been shown
towards Mr. Lydgate.  It will cheer you--will it not?--to know a great
deal about him, that he may not like to speak about himself just
because it is in his own vindication and to his own honor.  You will
like to know that your husband has warm friends, who have not left off
believing in his high character?  You will let me speak of this without
thinking that I take a liberty?"

The cordial, pleading tones which seemed to flow with generous
heedlessness above all the facts which had filled Rosamond's mind as
grounds of obstruction and hatred between her and this woman, came as
soothingly as a warm stream over her shrinking fears.  Of course Mrs.
Casaubon had the facts in her mind, but she was not going to speak of
anything connected with them.  That relief was too great for Rosamond
to feel much else at the moment.  She answered prettily, in the new
ease of her soul--

"I know you have been very good.  I shall like to hear anything you
will say to me about Tertius."

"The day before yesterday," said Dorothea, "when I had asked him to
come to Lowick to give me his opinion on the affairs of the Hospital,
he told me everything about his conduct and feelings in this sad event
which has made ignorant people cast suspicions on him.  The reason he
told me was because I was very bold and asked him.  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 husband.  Poor Dorothea was feeling a great wave
of her own sorrow returning over her--her thought being drawn to the
possible share that Will Ladislaw might have in Rosamond's mental
tumult.  She was beginning to fear that she should not be able to
suppress herself enough to the end of this meeting, and while her hand
was still resting on Rosamond's lap, though the hand underneath it was
withdrawn, she was struggling against her own rising sobs.  She tried
to master herself with the thought that this might be a turning-point
in three lives--not in her own; no, there the irrevocable had
happened, but--in those three lives which were touching hers with the
solemn neighborhood of danger and distress.  The fragile creature who
was crying close to her--there might still be time to rescue her from
the misery of false incompatible bonds; and this moment was unlike any
other: she and Rosamond could never be together again with the same
thrilling consciousness of yesterday within them both.  She felt the
relation between them to be peculiar enough to give her a peculiar
influence, though she had no conception that the way in which her own
feelings were involved was fully known to Mrs. Lydgate.

It was a newer crisis in Rosamond's experience than even Dorothea could
imagine: she was under the first great shock that had shattered her
dream-world in which she had been easily confident of herself and
critical of others; and this strange unexpected manifestation of
feeling in a woman whom she had approached with a shrinking aversion
and dread, as one who must necessarily have a jealous hatred towards
her, made her soul totter all the more with a sense that she had been
walking in an unknown world which had just broken in upon her.

When Rosamond's convulsed throat was subsiding into calm, and she
withdrew the handkerchief with which she had been hiding her face, her
eyes met Dorothea's as helplessly as if they had been blue flowers.
What was the use of thinking about behavior after this crying?  And
Dorothea looked almost as childish, with the neglected trace of a
silent tear.  Pride was broken down between these two.

"We were talking about your husband," Dorothea said, with some
timidity.  "I thought his looks were sadly changed with suffering the
other day.  I had not seen him for many weeks before.  He said he had
been feeling very lonely in his trial; but I think he would have borne
it all better if he had been able to be quite open with you."

"Tertius is so angry and impatient if I say anything," said Rosamond,
imagining that he had been complaining of her to Dorothea.  "He ought
not to wonder that I object to speak to him on painful subjects."

"It was himself he blamed for not speaking," said Dorothea.  "What he
said of you was, that he could not be happy in doing anything which
made you unhappy--that his marriage was of course a bond which must
affect his choice about everything; and for that reason he refused my
proposal that he should keep his position at the Hospital, because that
would bind him to stay in Middlemarch, and he would not undertake to do
anything which would be painful to you.  He could say that to me,
because he knows that I had much trial in my marriage, from my
husband's illness, which hindered his plans and saddened him; and he
knows that I have felt how hard it is to walk always in fear of hurting
another who is tied to us."

Dorothea waited a little; she had discerned a faint pleasure stealing
over Rosamond's face.  But there was no answer, and she went on, with a
gathering tremor, "Marriage is so unlike everything else.  There is
something even awful in the nearness it brings.  Even if we loved some
one else better than--than those we were married to, it would be no
use"--poor Dorothea, in her palpitating anxiety, could only seize her
language brokenly--"I mean, marriage drinks up all our power of giving
or getting any blessedness in that sort of love.  I know it may be very
dear--but it murders our marriage--and then the marriage stays with us
like a murder--and everything else is gone.  And then our husband--if
he loved and trusted us, and we have not helped him, but made a curse
in his life--"

Her voice had sunk very low: there was a dread upon her of presuming
too far, and of speaking as if she herself were perfection addressing
error.  She was too much preoccupied with her own anxiety, to be aware
that Rosamond was trembling too; and filled with the need to express
pitying fellowship rather than rebuke, she put her hands on Rosamond's,
and said with more agitated rapidity,--"I know, I know that the feeling
may be very dear--it has taken hold of us unawares--it is so hard, it
may seem like death to part with it--and we are weak--I am weak--"

The waves of her own sorrow, from out of which she was struggling to
save another, rushed over Dorothea with conquering force.  She stopped
in speechless agitation, not crying, but feeling as if she were being
inwardly grappled.  Her face had become of a deathlier paleness, her
lips trembled, and she pressed her hands helplessly on the hands that
lay under them.

Rosamond, taken hold of by an emotion stronger than her own--hurried
along in a new movement which gave all things some new, awful,
undefined aspect--could find no words, but involuntarily she put her
lips to Dorothea's forehead which was very near her, and then for a
minute the two women clasped each other as if they had been in a
shipwreck.

"You are thinking what is not true," said Rosamond, in an eager
half-whisper, while she was still feeling Dorothea's arms round
her--urged by a mysterious necessity to free herself from something
that oppressed her as if it were blood guiltiness.

They moved apart, looking at each other.

"When you came in yesterday--it was not as you thought," said Rosamond
in the same tone.

There was a movement of surprised attention in Dorothea.  She expected
a vindication of Rosamond herself.

"He was telling me how he loved another woman, that I might know he
could never love me," said Rosamond, getting more and more hurried as
she went on.  "And now I think he hates me because--because you
mistook him yesterday.  He says it is through me that you will think
ill of him--think that he is a false person.  But it shall not be
through me.  He has never had any love for me--I know he has not--he
has always thought slightly of me.  He said yesterday that no other
woman existed for him beside you.  The blame of what happened is
entirely mine.  He said he could never explain to you--because of me.
He said you could never think well of him again.  But now I have told
you, and he cannot reproach me any more."

Rosamond had delivered her soul under impulses which she had not known
before.  She had begun her confession under the subduing influence of
Dorothea's emotion; and as she went on she had gathered the sense that
she was repelling Will's reproaches, which were still like a
knife-wound within her.

The revulsion of feeling in Dorothea was too strong to be called joy.
It was a tumult in which the terrible strain of the night and morning
made a resistant pain:--she could only perceive that this would be joy
when she had recovered her power of feeling it.  Her immediate
consciousness was one of immense sympathy without check; she cared for
Rosamond without struggle now, and responded earnestly to her last
words--

"No, he cannot reproach you any more."

With her usual tendency to over-estimate the good in others, she felt a
great outgoing of her heart towards Rosamond, for the generous effort
which had redeemed her from suffering, not counting that the effort was
a reflex of her own energy.  After they had been silent a little, she
said--

"You are not sorry that I came this morning?"

"No, you have been very good to me," said Rosamond.  "I did not think
that you would be so good.  I was very unhappy.  I am not happy now.
Everything is so sad."

"But better days will come.  Your husband will be rightly valued.  And
he depends on you for comfort.  He loves you best.  The worst loss
would be to lose that--and you have not lost it," said Dorothea.

She tried to thrust away the too overpowering thought of her own
relief, lest she should fail to win some sign that Rosamond's affection
was yearning back towards her husband.

"Tertius did not find fault with me, then?" said Rosamond,
understanding now that Lydgate might have said anything to Mrs.
Casaubon, and that she certainly was different from other women.
Perhaps there was a faint taste of jealousy in the question.  A smile
began to play over Dorothea's face as she said--

"No, indeed!  How could you imagine it?"  But here the door opened, and
Lydgate entered.

"I am come back in my quality of doctor," he said.  "After I went away,
I was haunted by two pale faces: Mrs. Casaubon looked as much in need
of care as you, Rosy.  And I thought that I had not done my duty in
leaving you together; so when I had been to Coleman's I came home
again.  I noticed that you were walking, Mrs. Casaubon, and the sky has
changed--I think we may have rain.  May I send some one to order your
carriage to come for you?"

"Oh, no!  I am strong: I need the walk," said Dorothea, rising with
animation in her face.  "Mrs. Lydgate and I have chatted a great deal,
and it is time for me to go.  I have always been accused of being
immoderate and saying too much."

She put out her hand to Rosamond, and they said an earnest, quiet
good-by without kiss or other show of effusion: there had been between
them too much serious emotion for them to use the signs of it
superficially.

As Lydgate took her to the door she said nothing of Rosamond, but told
him of Mr. Farebrother and the other friends who had listened with
belief to his story.

When he came back to Rosamond, she had already thrown herself on the
sofa, in resigned fatigue.

"Well, Rosy," he said, standing over her, and touching her hair, "what
do you think of Mrs. Casaubon now you have seen so much of her?"

"I think she must be better than any one," said Rosamond, "and she is
very beautiful.  If you go to talk to her so often, you will be more
discontented with me than ever!"

Lydgate laughed at the "so often."  "But has she made you any less
discontented with me?"

"I think she has," said Rosamond, looking up in his face.  "How heavy
your eyes are, Tertius--and do push your hair back." He lifted up his
large white hand to obey her, and felt thankful for this little mark of
interest in him.  Poor Rosamond's vagrant fancy had come back terribly
scourged--meek enough to nestle under the old despised shelter.  And
the shelter was still there: Lydgate had accepted his narrowed lot with
sad resignation.  He had chosen this fragile creature, and had taken
the burthen of her life upon his arms.  He must walk as he could,
carrying that burthen pitifully.

 Dorothea finds Lydgate at home, and Lydgate thanks her for giving him the money with which to pay his debt to Bulstrode. Dorothea is only too happy to have been of service; she asks him in Rosamond is in, and finds Lydgate completely unaware of what went on the previous day. Rosamond is wary at the visit, but receives her anyway, and finds her quite different from the day before, though perhaps troubled. Dorothea reassures her that her husband is a good person, and is still welcomed in Middlemarch by people of character and influence, like herself, Sir James, Mr. Brooke, and Mr. Farebrother. Dorothea then proceeds to speak about marriage, trying to address Rosamond and Lydgate's marriage in the process. Dorothea hits on some of her own sadness though, and her anguish at the whole debacle with Will becomes apparent. Dorothea convinces Rosamond that Lydgate loves her very much, and that she needs to give the marriage a chance, because she still has his love; this cheers Rosamond up a bit, though her mind is still dazed from the previous day. Rosamond feels that she should clarify the situation with Will, so Rosamond tells her that Will was only there to explain that he loved someone other than Rosamond, and always would. Rosamond tells her this to try and exonerate herself somewhat, although Dorothea takes this statement as an expression of sympathy and goodness on Rosamond's part. Then, Lydgate enters, and the two part; neither can hold anything against the other anymore, and both their minds have been eased.

