 hand
before Dorothea entered. The meeting was very different from that first meeting
in Rome when Will had been embarrassed and Dorothea calm. This time he felt
miserable but determined, while she was in a state of agitation which could not
be hidden. Just outside the door she had felt that this longed-for meeting was
after all too difficult, and when she saw Will advancing towards her, the deep
blush which was rare in her came with painful suddenness. Neither of them knew
how it was, but neither of them spoke. She gave her hand for a moment, and then
they went to sit down near the window, she on one settee and he on another
opposite. Will was peculiarly uneasy: it seemed to him not like Dorothea that
the mere fact of her being a widow should cause such a change in her manner of
receiving him; and he knew of no other condition which could have affected their
previous relation to each other - except that, as his imagination at once told
him, her friends might have been poisoning her mind with their suspicions of
him.
    »I hope I have not presumed too much in calling,« said Will; »I could not
bear to leave the neighbourhood and begin a new life without seeing you to say
good-bye.«
    »Presumed? Surely not. I should have thought it unkind if you had not wished
to see me,« said Dorothea, her habit of speaking with perfect genuineness
asserting itself through all her uncertainty and agitation. »Are you going away
immediately?«
    »Very soon, I think. I intend to go to town and eat my dinners as a
barrister, since, they say, that is the preparation for all public business.
There will be a great deal of political work to be done by-and-by, and I mean to
try and do some of it. Other men have managed to win an honourable position for
themselves without family or money.«
    »And that will make it all the more honourable,« said Dorothea, ardently.
»Besides, you have so many talents. I have heard from my uncle how well you
speak in public, so that every one is sorry when you leave off, and how clearly
you can explain things. And you care that justice should be done to every one. I
am so glad. When we were in Rome, I thought you only cared for poetry and art,
and the things that adorn life for us who are well of. But now I know you think
about the rest of the world.«
    While she was speaking Dorothea
