She looked at him from that distance in some trouble, imagining that there might hate been an offence in her words. But all the while there was a current of thought in her about his probable want of money, and the impossibility of her helping him. If her uncle had been at home, something might have been done through him! It was this preoccupation with the hardship of Will’s wanting money, while she had what ought to have been his share, which led her to say, seeing that he remained silent and looked away from her—

“I wonder whether you would like to have that miniature which hangs up-stairs—I mean that beautiful miniature of your grandmother. I think it is not right for me to keep it, if you would wish to have it. It is wonderfully like you.”

“You are very good,” said Will, irritably. “No; I don’t mind about it. It is not very consoling to have one’s own likeness. It would be more consoling if others wanted to have it.”

“I thought you would like to cherish her memory—I thought—“Dorothea broke off an instant, her imagination suddenly warning her away from Aunt Julia’s history—“you would surely like to have the miniature as a family memorial.”

“Why should I have that, when I have nothing else! A man with only a portmanteau for his stowage must keep his memorials in his head.”

Will spoke at random: he was merely venting his petulance; it was a little too exasperating to have his grandmother’s portrait offered him at that moment. But to Dorothea’s feeling his words had a peculiar sting. She rose and said with a touch of indignation as well as hauteur—

“You are much the happier of us two, Mr Ladislaw, to have nothing.”

Will was startled. Whatever the words might be, the tone seemed like a dismissal; and quitting his leaning posture, he walked a little way towards her. Their eyes met, but with a strange questioning gravity. Something was keeping their minds aloof, and each was left to conjecture what was in the other. Will had really never thought of himself as having a claim of inheritance on the property which was held by Dorothea, and would have required a narrative to make him understand her present feeling.

“I never felt it a misfortune to have nothing till now,” he said. “But poverty may be as bad as leprosy, if it divides us from what we most care for.”

The words cut Dorothea to the heart, and made her relent. She answered in a tone of sad fellowship.

“Sorrow comes in so many ways. Two years ago I had no notion of that—I mean of the unexpected way in which trouble comes, and ties our hands, and makes us silent when we long to speak. I used to despise women a little for not shaping their lives more, and doing better things. I was very fond of doing as I liked, but I have almost given it up,” she ended, smiling playfully.

“I have not given up doing as I like, but I can very seldom do it,” said Will. He was standing two yards from her with his mind full of contradictory desires and resolves—desiring some unmistakable proof that she loved him, and yet dreading the position into which such a proof might bring him. “The thing one most longs for may be surrounded with conditions that would be intolerable.”

At this moment Pratt entered and said, “Sir James Chettam is in the library, madam.”

“Ask Sir James to come in here,” said Dorothea, immediately. It was as if the same electric shock had passed through her and Will. Each of them felt proudly resistant, and neither looked at the other, while they awaited Sir James’s entrance.

After shaking hands with Dorothea, he bowed as slightly as possible to Ladislaw, who repaid the slightness exactly, and then going towards Dorothea, said—