She returns,
not in joy or hope, but in that which is deeper than all joy and hope--in
love; the one thought revealed to us being that it may be her blessedness
to stand by him whose baseness drove her away when suffering and loss
have come upon him. But Death--the mystery to which we look as the
solver of all earthly mysteries--has resolved for her this darkest and
saddest perplexity of her life. Tito is gone to his place: and his
baseness shall vex her no more with antagonistic duties and a divided
life. There is no joy, no expressed sense of relief and release; no
reproach of him other than that implied one which springs out of the
necessities of her being, the putting away from her, quietly and
unobtrusively, the material gains of his treasons. The poor innocent
wrong-doer, Tessa, is sought for, rescued, and cared for; and is never
allowed to know the foul wrong to her rescuer of which she has been made
the unconscious instrument. Even to her the language is that "Naldo will
return no more, not because he is cruel, but because he is dead."
One direct trial of her faith and patience remains, through the weakness
and apparent apostasy of Savonarola.
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