“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 the world, poor Mrs. Casaubon had a very blurred shortsighted knowledge, little helped by her imagination.) But she took the smile as encouragement of her plan.

“I think you see now that you spoke too scrupulously,” she said, in a tone of persuasion.  “The hospital would be one good; and making your life quite whole and well again would be another.”

Lydgate’s smile had died away.  “You have the goodness as well as the money to do all that; if it could be done,” he said.  “But—­”

He hesitated a little while, looking vaguely towards the window; and she sat in silent expectation.  At last he turned towards her and said impetuously—­

“Why should I not tell you?—­you know what sort of bond marriage is.  You will understand everything.”

Dorothea felt her heart beginning to beat faster.  Had he that sorrow too?  But she feared to say any word, and he went on immediately.

“It is impossible for me now to do anything—­to take any step without considering my wife’s happiness.  The thing that I might like to do if I were alone, is become impossible to me.  I can’t see her miserable.  She married me without knowing what she was going into, and it might have been better for her if she had not married me.”

“I know, I know—­you could not give her pain, if you were not obliged to do it,” said Dorothea, with keen memory of her own life.

“And she has set her mind against staying.  She wishes to go.  The troubles she has had here have wearied her,” said Lydgate, breaking off again, lest he should say too much.

“But when she saw the good that might come of staying—­” said Dorothea, remonstrantly, looking at Lydgate as if he had forgotten the reasons which had just been considered.  He did not speak immediately.