"An appreciation which might easily be returned, Dr. Eldrige. I know whose name is a household word over all this Flat."
"Yet the lives of these people are hard," he said; "hard and pitiable, for all your efforts and mine."
"But not so hard as they might otherwise be; and as for that, many lives are hard--every life that lives and labors under false impressions is hard."
He glanced at her as though to catch the import of her words, and then he knew that there was something in her thought more than her words signified; but he waited for her to continue.
"A mistaken idea is quite as capable of causing unhappiness as the sternest reality," she said.
"There is something you wish to say to me, Mrs. Thorpe. Why do you disguise your meaning? Can we not be frank with each other?"
"Thank you, Dr. Eldrige; I hope that our friendship is not so poor a thing that it cannot stand a straightforward word. This, then, is what I wish to say: I believe your standards to be excellent and your sense of justice fine and true, yet in your estimate of another you have allowed yourself to be influenced by outside appearances; and while I can see your point of view, yet I know you are condemning as good and true a woman as ever lived, for something she did not know existed."
Mrs. Thorpe saw the man's face harden, his brows contract, and pain, keen and sharp, flash in his eyes; and when he spoke there was severity in his voice.
"She knew the man's character," he said.
Mrs. Thorpe's eyes, level, unflinching, met his.