"I had some ambition. I meant everything to be
different with me. I thought I had more strength and mastery. But
the most terrible obstacles are such as nobody can see except oneself."
"Suppose," said Dorothea, meditatively,--"suppose we kept on the
Hospital according to the present plan, and you stayed here though
only with the friendship and support of a few, the evil feeling
towards you would gradually die out; there would come opportunities
in which people would be forced to acknowledge that they had been
unjust to you, because they would see that your purposes were pure.
You may still win a great fame like the Louis and Laennec I have
heard you speak of, and we shall all be proud of you," she ended,
with a smile.
"That might do if I had my old trust in myself," said Lydgate,
mournfully. "Nothing galls me more than the notion of turning round
and running away before this slander, leaving it unchecked behind me.
Still, I can't ask any one to put a great deal of money into a plan
which depends on me."
"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.
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