“It is a delicate matter to touch,” he said.  “How can we begin to inquire into it?  It must be either publicly by setting the magistrate and coroner to work, or privately by questioning Lydgate.  As to the first proceeding there is no solid ground to go upon, else Hawley would have adopted it; and as to opening the subject with Lydgate, I confess I should shrink from it.  He would probably take it as a deadly insult.  I have more than once experienced the difficulty of speaking to him on personal matters.  And—­one should know the truth about his conduct beforehand, to feel very confident of a good result.”

“I feel convinced that his conduct has not been guilty:  I believe that people are almost always better than their neighbors think they are,” said Dorothea.  Some of her intensest experience in the last two years had set her mind strongly in opposition to any unfavorable construction of others; and for the first time she felt rather discontented with Mr. Farebrother.  She disliked this cautious weighing of consequences, instead of an ardent faith in efforts of justice and mercy, which would conquer by their emotional force.  Two days afterwards, he was dining at the Manor with her uncle and the Chettams, and when the dessert was standing uneaten, the servants were out of the room, and Mr. Brooke was nodding in a nap, she returned to the subject with renewed vivacity.

“Mr. Lydgate would understand that if his friends hear a calumny about him their first wish must be to justify him.  What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?  I cannot be indifferent to the troubles of a man who advised me in my trouble, and attended me in my illness.”

Dorothea’s tone and manner were not more energetic than they had been when she was at the head of her uncle’s table nearly three years before, and her experience since had given her more right to express a decided opinion.  But Sir James Chettam was no longer the diffident and acquiescent suitor:  he was the anxious brother-in-law, with a devout admiration for his sister, but with a constant alarm lest she should fall under some new illusion almost as bad as marrying Casaubon.  He smiled much less; when he said “Exactly” it was more often an introduction to a dissentient opinion than in those submissive bachelor days; and Dorothea found to her surprise that she had to resolve not to be afraid of him—­all the more because he was really her best friend.  He disagreed with her now.

“But, Dorothea,” he said, remonstrantly, “you can’t undertake to manage a man’s life for him in that way.  Lydgate must know—­ at least he will soon come to know how he stands.  If he can clear himself, he will.  He must act for himself.”