"I wouldn't rake things up. It would only bother him," said Isabel, acting counsellor in her turn.
"Well, you have taken my advice, so it is only fair that I should take yours," laughed Margot.
"I wouldn't," repeated Isabel. "Father took the first stop towards a reconciliation—sending that card, I mean,—and it is Colonel Tracy's turn next. He ought to do something more than just to send back the card after waiting a whole year. He was the one in the wrong,—most in the wrong, at all events. If Mrs. Tracy were alive—but she isn't, and we don't know anything about that Dorothea girl."
[CHAPTER XIV]
DOROTHEA'S LETTER
"I HAVE been very nearly a year at home now," wrote Dorothea Tracy to her friend, Mrs. Kirkpatrick, one dull December afternoon.
"Nearly a whole year! What a long time a year is! I feel ages older than when I saw you last. Quite middle-aged and experienced."
"It has not been an unhappy year. Need one ever be unhappy, I wonder, merely because things are not exactly as one would choose? Or rather,—no, I don't wonder, because I am perfectly sure one need not."
"I want to tell you that I really have tried hard to follow the advice you gave me that last evening,—you will remember it, though perhaps not as clearly as I do. Trying to do doesn't always mean doing; but indeed I have tried."