it was difficult to go on; she made a great effort over herself to say in a low tremulous voice, “but thinking that you were different—not so good as I had believed you to be.”
“You are sure to believe me better than I am in everything but one,” said Will, giving way to his own feeling in the evidence of hers. “I mean, in my truth to you. When I thought you doubted of that, I didn’t care about anything that was left. I thought it was all over with me, and there was nothing to try for—only things to endure.”
“I don’t doubt you any longer,” said Dorothea, putting out her hand; a vague fear for him impelling her unutterable affection.
He took her hand and raised it to his lips with something like a sob. But he stood with his hat and gloves in the other hand, and might have done for the portrait of a Royalist. Still it was difficult to loose the hand, and Dorothea, withdrawing it in a confusion that distressed her, looked and moved away.