St. George and St. Michael. Volume II

And now was an evil time for Dorothy. She retired to her chamber / more than disheartened by lord Worcester's behaviour to her, vexed / with herself for doing what she would have been more vexed with / herself for having left undone, feeling wronged, lonely, and / disgraced, conscious of honesty, yet ashamed to show herself -- and / all for the sake of a presumptuous boy, whose opinions were a / disgust to her and his actions a horror! Yet not only did she not / repent of what she had done, but, fact as strange as natural, began, / with mingled pleasure and annoyance, to feel her heart drawn towards / the fanatic as the only one left her in the world capable of doing / her justice, that was, of understanding her. She thus unknowingly / made a step towards the discovery that it is infinitely better to / think wrong and to act right upon that wrong thinking, than it is to / think right and not to do as that thinking requires of us. In the / former case the man's house, if not built upon the rock, at least / has the rock beneath it; in the latter, it is founded on nothing but / sand. The former man may be a Saul of Tarsus, the latter a Judas / Iscariot. He who acts right will soon think right; he who acts wrong / will soon think wrong. Any two persons acting faithfully upon / opposite convictions, are divided but by a bowing wall; any two, in / belief most harmonious, who do not act upon it, are divided by, / infinite gulfs of the blackness of darkness, across which neither / ever beholds the real self of the other.

Dorothy ought to have gone at once to lady Margaret and told her / all; but she naturally and rightly shrank from what might seem an / appeal to the daughter against the judgment of her father; neither / could she dare hope that, if she did, her judgment would not be / against her also. Her feelings were now in danger of being turned / back upon herself, and growing bitter; for a lasting sense of injury / is, of the human moods, one of the least favourable to sweetness and / growth. There was no one to whom she could turn. Had good Dr. Bayly / been at home -- but he was away on some important mission from his / lordship to the king: and indeed she could scarcely have looked for / refuge from such misery as hers in the judgment of the rather / priggish old-bachelor ecclesiastic. Gladly would she have forsaken / the castle, and returned to all the dangers and fears of her lonely / home; but that would be to yield to a lie, to flee from the devil / instead of facing him, and with her own hand to fix the imputed / smirch upon her forehead, exposing herself besides to the suspicion / of having fled to join her lover, and cast in her lot with his / amongst the traitors. Besides, she had been left by lord Herbert in / charge of his fire-engine and the water of the castle, which trust / she could not abandon. Whatever might be yet to come of it, she must / stay and encounter it, and would in the meantime set herself to / discover, if she might, the secret pathway by which dog and man came / and went at their pleasure. This she owed her friends, even at the / risk, in case of success, of confirming the marquis's worst / suspicions.