him to tell you all, or
it would not have been fair towards you to bring me here."

"He told me that he knew you had been blind and wilful, but that your
confidence had been cruelly abused, and you had been most unselfish
throughout."

"I did not mean so much what I had done as what I am--what I was."

"The first time he mentioned you, it was as one of the reasons that he
wished to take our dear Bessie to Avonmouth. He said there was a girl
there of a strong spirit, independent and thorough-going, and thinking
for herself. He said, 'to be sure, she generally thinks wrong, but
there's a candour and simplicity about her that make her wildest
blunders better than parrot commonplace,' and he thought your reality
might impress his sister. Even then I gathered what was coming."

"And how wrong and foolish you must have thought it."

"I hoped I might trust my boy's judgment."

"Indeed, you could not think it worse for him than I did; but I was ill
and weak, and could not help letting Alick do what he would; but I have
never understood it. I told him how unsettled my views were, and he did
not seem to mind--"

"My dear, may I ask if this sense of being unsettled is with you still?"

"I don't know! I had no power to read or think for a long time, and now,
since I have been here, I hope it has not been hypocrisy, for going on
in your way and his has been very sweet to me, and made me feel as I
used when I was a young girl, with only an ugly dream between. I don't
like to look at it, and yet that dream was my real life that I made for
myself."

"Dear child, I have little doubt that Alick knew it would come to this."

Rachel paused. "What, you and he think a woman's doubts so vague and
shallow as to be always mastered by a husband's influence?"

Mr. Clare was embarrassed. If he had thought so he had not expected her
to make the inference. He asked her if she could venture to look back on
her dream so as to mention what had chiefly distressed her. He could not
see her frowning effort at recollection, but after a pause, she said,
"Things will seem to you like trifles, indeed, individual criticisms
appear so to me; but the difficulty to my mind is that I don't see these
objections fairly grappled with. There is either denunciation or weak
argument; but I can better recollect the impression on my own mind than
what made it."

"Yes, I know that feeling; but are you sure you have seen all the
arguments?"

"I cannot tell-