the wrongs which she felt that Will had received from her
husband, and the external conditions which to others were grounds for slighting
him, only gave the more tenacity to her affection and admiring judgment. And now
with the disclosures about Bulstrode had come another fact affecting Will's
social position, which roused afresh Dorothea's inward resistance to what was
said about him in that part of her world which lay within park palings.
    »Young Ladislaw the grandson of a thieving Jew pawnbroker« was a phrase
which had entered emphatically into the dialogues about the Bulstrode business,
at Lowick, Tipton, and Freshitt, and was a worse kind of placard on poor Will's
back than the »Italian with white mice.« Upright Sir James Chettam was convinced
that his own satisfaction was righteous when he thought with some complacency
that here was an added league to that mountainous distance between Ladislaw and
Dorothea, which enabled him to dismiss any anxiety in that direction as too
absurd. And perhaps there had been some pleasure in pointing Mr. Brooke's
attention to this ugly bit of Ladislaw's genealogy, as a fresh candle for him to
see his own folly by. Dorothea had observed the animus with which Will's part in
the painful story had been recalled more than once; but she had uttered no word,
being checked now, as she had not been formerly in speaking of Will, by the
consciousness of a deeper relation between them which must always remain in
consecrated secrecy. But her silence shrouded her resistant emotion into a more
thorough glow; and this misfortune in Will's lot which, it seemed, others were
wishing to fling at his back as an opprobrium, only gave something more of
enthusiasm to her clinging thought.
    She entertained no visions of their ever coming into nearer union, and yet
she had taken no posture of renunciation. She had accepted her whole relation to
Will very simply as part of her marriage sorrows, and would have thought it very
sinful in her to keep up an inward wail because she was not completely happy,
being rather disposed to dwell on the superfluities of her lot. She could bear
that the chief pleasures of her tenderness should lie in memory, and the idea of
marriage came to her solely as a repulsive proposition from some suitor of whom
she at present knew nothing, but whose merits, as seen by her friends, would be
a source of torment to her: - »somebody who will manage your property for you,
my dear,« was Mr. Brooke's attractive suggestion of suitable characteristics. »I
should like to manage it myself,