“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.
“She would not see it,” he said at last, curtly, feeling at first that this statement must do without explanation. “And, indeed, I have lost all spirit about carrying on my life here.” He paused a moment and then, following the impulse to let Dorothea see