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.