Rosamond had delivered her soul under impulses which she had not known before. She had begun her confession under the subduing influence of Dorothea’s emotion; and as she went on she had gathered the sense that she was repelling Will’s reproaches, which were still like a knife-wound within her.
The revulsion of feeling in Dorothea was too strong to be called joy. It was a tumult in which the terrible strain of the night and morning made a resistant pain:—she could only perceive that this would be joy when she had recovered her power of feeling it. Her immediate consciousness was one of immense sympathy without check; she cared for Rosamond without struggle now, and responded earnestly to her last words—
“No, he cannot reproach you any more.”
With her usual tendency to overestimate the good in others, she felt a great outgoing of her heart towards Rosamond, for the generous effort which had redeemed her from suffering, not counting that the effort was a reflex of her own energy. After they had been silent a little, she said—
“You are not sorry that I came this morning?”
“No, you have been very good to me,” said Rosamond. “I did not think that you would be so good. I was very unhappy. I am not happy now. Everything is so sad.”
“But better days will come. Your husband will be rightly valued. And he depends on you for comfort. He loves you best. The worst loss would be to lose that—and you have not lost it,” said Dorothea.
She tried to thrust away the too overpowering thought of her own relief, lest she should fail to win some sign that Rosamond’s affection was yearning back towards her husband.