you said to me when you first spoke to
me about the hospital. There is no sorrow I have thought more about
than that--to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail."

"Yes," said Lydgate, feeling that here he had found room for the full
meaning of his grief. "I had some ambition. I meant everything to be
different with me. I thought I had more strength and mastery. But the
most terrible obstacles are such as nobody can see except oneself."

"Suppose," said Dorothea, meditatively,--"suppose we kept on the
Hospital according to the present plan, and you stayed here though only
with the friendship and support of a few, the evil feeling towards you
would gradually die out; there would come opportunities in which people
would be forced to acknowledge that they had been unjust to you,
because they would see that your purposes were pure. You may still win
a great fame like the Louis and Laennec I have heard you speak of, and
we shall all be proud of you," she ended, with a smile.

"That might do if I had my old trust in myself," said Lydgate,
mournfully. "Nothing galls me more than the notion of turning round
and running away before this slander, leaving it unchecked behind me.
Still, I can't ask any one to put a great deal of money into a plan
which depends on me."

"It would be quite worth my while," said Dorothea, simply. "Only
think. I am very uncomfortable with my money, because they tell me I
have too little for any great scheme of the sort I like best, and yet I
have too much. I don't know what to do. I have seven hundred a-year
of my own fortune, and nineteen hundred a-year that Mr. Casaubon left
me, and between three and four thousand of ready money in the bank. I
wished to raise money and pay it off gradually out of my income which I
don't want, to buy land with and found a village which should be a
school of industry; but Sir James and my uncle have convinced me that
the risk would be too great. So you see that what I should most
rejoice at would be to have something good to do with my money: I
should like it to make other people's lives better to them. It makes
me very uneasy--coming all to me who don't want it."

A smile broke through the gloom of Lydgate's face. The childlike
grave-eyed earnestness with which Dorothea said all this was
irresistible--blent into an adorable whole with her ready understanding
of high experience. (Of lower experience such as plays a great part in
t