 Rosamond's side. But it would
be unjust not to tell, that she never uttered a word in depreciation of
Dorothea, keeping in religious remembrance the generosity which had come to her
aid in the sharpest crisis of her life.
    Dorothea herself had no dreams of being praised above other women, feeling
that there was always something better which she might have done, if she had
only been better and known better. Still, she never repented that she had given
up position and fortune to marry Will Ladislaw, and he would have held it the
greatest shame as well as sorrow to him if she had repented. They were bound to
each other by a love stronger than any impulses which could have marred it. No
life would have been possible to Dorothea which was not filled with emotion, and
she had now a life filled also with a beneficent activity which she had not the
doubtful pains of discovering and marking out for herself. Will became an ardent
public man, working well in those times when reforms were begun with a young
hopefulness of immediate good which has been much checked in our days, and
getting at last returned to Parliament by a constituency who paid his expenses.
Dorothea could have liked nothing better, since wrongs existed, than that her
husband should be in the thick of a struggle against them, and that she should
give him wifely help. Many who knew her, thought it a pity that so substantive
and rare a creature should have been absorbed into the life of another, and be
only known in a certain circle as a wife and mother. But no one stated exactly
what else that was in her power she ought rather to have done - not even Sir
James Chettam, who went no further than the negative prescription that she ought
not to have married Will Ladislaw.
    But this opinion of his did not cause a lasting alienation; and the way in
which the family was made whole again was characteristic of all concerned. Mr.
Brooke could not resist the pleasure of corresponding with Will and Dorothea;
and one morning when his pen had been remarkably fluent on the prospects of
Municipal Reform, it ran off into an invitation to the Grange, which, once
written, could not be done away with at less cost than the sacrifice (hardly to
be conceived) of the whole valuable letter. During the months of this
correspondence Mr. Brooke had continually, in his talk with Sir James Chettam,
been presupposing or hinting that the intention of cutting off the entail was
still maintained; and the day on which his pen gave the daring invitation, he
went to Freshitt expressly to intimate that
