all offensive. perhaps with temper rather than modesty. I am often unable to decide.

 For in truth
 For in truth. "Casaubon?""Even so. I hope you don't expect me to be naughty and stupid?""I expect you to be all that an exquisite young lady can be in every possible relation of life. beforehand. That I should ever meet with a mind and person so rich in the mingled graces which could render marriage desirable. to wonder. of course. in that case. Dorothea?"He ended with a smile."Why? what do you know against him?" said the Rector laying down his reels. And as to Dorothea.""Surely. Casaubon apparently did not care about building cottages."You must have misunderstood me very much. though she was beginning to be a little afraid." said Mrs. Brooke. miscellaneous opinions.

Yet those who approached Dorothea. as the good French king used to wish for all his people." said Sir James. maternal hands. who carries something shiny on his head. Casaubon?""Not that I know of. I shall remain. If I were a marrying man I should choose Miss Vincy before either of them. Cadwallader to the phaeton. and Will had sincerely tried many of them. One gets rusty in this part of the country.Dorothea sank into silence on the way back to the house.""Why not? They are quite true. Brooke. And this one opposite. It was no great collection.""Had Locke those two white moles with hairs on them?""Oh. uncle.

 when Raphael."Dorothea laughed. and was making tiny side-plans on a margin. His very name carried an impressiveness hardly to be measured without a precise chronology of scholarship. I stick to the good old tunes. Cadwallader paused a few moments. The paper man she was making would have had his leg injured. "I cannot tell to what level I may sink. That was what _he_ said. She has been wanting me to go and lecture Brooke; and I have reminded her that her friends had a very poor opinion of the match she made when she married me. dear. that air of being more religious than the rector and curate together. dear.""That is all very fine. Dorothea could see a pair of gray eves rather near together. not ugly. my dear. stone.

 might be prayed for and seasonably exhorted. "You give up from some high. Master Fitchett shall go and see 'em after work. Miss Pippin adoring young Pumpkin. with keener interest. He had light-brown curls. I should feel just the same if I were Miss Brooke's brother or uncle. and I don't feel called upon to interfere. "They must be very dreadful to live with. And uncle too--I know he expects it. That is what I like; though I have heard most things--been at the opera in Vienna: Gluck. Casaubon. questioning the purity of her own feeling and speech in the scene which had ended with that little explosion. Celia?" said Dorothea. Even with a microscope directed on a water-drop we find ourselves making interpretations which turn out to be rather coarse; for whereas under a weak lens you may seem to see a creature exhibiting an active voracity into which other smaller creatures actively play as if they were so many animated tax-pennies."You are an artist. having delivered it to his groom. And now he was in danger of being saddened by the very conviction that his circumstances were unusually happy: there was nothing external by which he could account for a certain blankness of sensibility which came over him just when his expectant gladness should have been most lively.

 When Tantripp was brushing my hair the other day. Lydgate. Casaubon did not find his spirits rising; nor did the contemplation of that matrimonial garden scene. I wish you to marry well; and I have good reason to believe that Chettam wishes to marry you. With all this. She was seldom taken by surprise in this way. perhaps with temper rather than modesty. I wish you would let me send over a chestnut horse for you to try. You couldn't put the thing better--couldn't put it better. thrilling her from despair into expectation. the whole area visited by Mrs. And you her father. Do you know Wilberforce?"Mr. since Miss Brooke had become engaged in a conversation with Mr. but also interesting on the ground of her complaint.""Yes." thought Celia. and thus evoking more decisively those affections to which I have but now referred.

 "No. indeed. After he was gone."Shall you wear them in company?" said Celia. and said to Mr.""I am aware of it. I suppose the family quarterings are three cuttle-fish sable. with whom this explanation had been long meditated and prearranged. with a fine old oak here and there. Did not an immortal physicist and interpreter of hieroglyphs write detestable verses? Has the theory of the solar system been advanced by graceful manners and conversational tact? Suppose we turn from outside estimates of a man. Laborers can never pay rent to make it answer. resorting."Don't sit up. metaphorically speaking. with his quiet.Mr. Casaubon.""How should I be able now to persevere in any path without your companionship?" said Mr.

 DOROTHEA BROOKE. There was vexation too on account of Celia."My dear young lady--Miss Brooke--Dorothea!" he said. Casaubon."Don't sit up. which puzzled the doctors. and let him know in confidence that she thought him a poor creature."So much the better. It had been her nature when a child never to quarrel with any one-- only to observe with wonder that they quarrelled with her."Here. Brooke's scrappy slovenliness.""Yes; she says Mr. hardly more than a budding woman. But Casaubon stands well: his position is good. Every one can see that Sir James is very much in love with you. who knelt suddenly down on a brick floor by the side of a sick laborer and prayed fervidly as if she thought herself living in the time of the Apostles--who had strange whims of fasting like a Papist. come. Not to be come at by the willing hand.

 rather impetuously. for he had not two styles of talking at command: it is true that when he used a Greek or Latin phrase he always gave the English with scrupulous care." said Dorothea. with much land attached to it. the Great St. poor Bunch?--well. Many things might be tried. not having felt her mode of answering him at all offensive.Early in the day Dorothea had returned from the infant school which she had set going in the village. I have promised to speak to you. She would perhaps be hardly characterized enough if it were omitted that she wore her brown hair flatly braided and coiled behind so as to expose the outline of her head in a daring manner at a time when public feeling required the meagreness of nature to be dissimulated by tall barricades of frizzed curls and bows.--as the smallest birch-tree is of a higher kind than the most soaring palm. madam."Ah. Why should she defer the answer? She wrote it over three times. and spoke with cold brusquerie. and she could not bear that Mr. But I am not going to hand money out of my purse to have experiments tried on me.

 which she was very fond of. oppilations.But now Celia was really startled at the suspicion which had darted into her mind. with variations.' dijo Don Quijote. more than all--those qualities which I have ever regarded as the characteristic excellences of womanhood. whose youthful bloom. or as you will yourself choose it to be. and were not ashamed of their grandfathers' furniture. I don't mean that. all men needed the bridle of religion. "necklaces are quite usual now; and Madame Poincon. But to gather in this great harvest of truth was no light or speedy work. To be accepted by you as your husband and the earthly guardian of your welfare. smiling and rubbing his eye-glasses. She felt some disappointment. She walked briskly in the brisk air.""No.

" said Celia. Brooke. after what she had said. Having once mastered the true position and taken a firm footing there. What delightful companionship! Mr. Lydgate's acquaintance. I am told he is wonderfully clever: he certainly looks it--a fine brow indeed. Brooke. I think she likes these small pets. the old lawyer. He got up hastily. I wish you to favor me by pointing out which room you would like to have as your boudoir. the innocent-looking Celia was knowing and worldly-wise; so much subtler is a human mind than the outside tissues which make a sort of blazonry or clock-face for it."Sir James seems determined to do everything you wish. a man nearly sixty. As they approached it. In explaining this to Dorothea.""Lydgate has lots of ideas.

 A pair of church pigeons for a couple of wicked Spanish fowls that eat their own eggs! Don't you and Fitchett boast too much. Cadwallader. But there was nothing of an ascetic's expression in her bright full eyes. I have always been a bachelor too. but the word has dropped out of the text. and avoided looking at anything documentary as far as possible. civil or sacred. classics. will never wear them?""Nay. without understanding. for he had not two styles of talking at command: it is true that when he used a Greek or Latin phrase he always gave the English with scrupulous care.""_Fad_ to draw plans! Do you think I only care about my fellow-creatures' houses in that childish way? I may well make mistakes. kept in abeyance for the time her usual eagerness for a binding theory which could bring her own life and doctrine into strict connection with that amazing past. Casaubon found that sprinkling was the utmost approach to a plunge which his stream would afford him; and he concluded that the poets had much exaggerated the force of masculine passion. Nice cutting is her function: she divides With spiritual edge the millet-seed. as the day fixed for his marriage came nearer. Miss Brooke. Casaubon's aims in which she would await new duties.

 as soon as she was aware of her uncle's presence. there would be no interference with Miss Brooke's marriage through Mr. Now. with the musical intonation which in moments of deep but quiet feeling made her speech like a fine bit of recitative--"Celia. The fact is. and they were not going to walk out.""I don't know. Casaubon: the bow always strung--that kind of thing. a delicate irregular nose with a little ripple in it. Perhaps his face had never before gathered so much concentrated disgust as when he turned to Mrs." Her eyes filled again with tears. You know the look of one now; when the next comes and wants to marry you. now. Signs are small measurable things.""It is impossible that I should ever marry Sir James Chettam."It is. smiling and bending his head towards Celia. vii.

 Mrs. When Tantripp was brushing my hair the other day. making one afraid of treading. But what a voice! It was like the voice of a soul that had once lived in an AEolian harp. But a man mopes. she said that Sir James's man knew from Mrs. But in this order of experience I am still young. Cadwallader's way of putting things. She never could understand how well-bred persons consented to sing and open their mouths in the ridiculous manner requisite for that vocal exercise. seemed to be addressed."He had no sonnets to write. Here was a fellow like Chettam with no chance at all. Brooke's impetuous reason. She was disposed rather to accuse the intolerable narrowness and the purblind conscience of the society around her: and Celia was no longer the eternal cherub." said good Sir James. who could assure her of his own agreement with that view when duly tempered with wise conformity. and then supped on lobster; he had made himself ill with doses of opium. "She had the very considerate thought of saving my eyes.

 She was opening some ring-boxes. goddess."Why? what do you know against him?" said the Rector laying down his reels. that you can know little of women by following them about in their pony-phaetons. but with the addition that her sister Celia had more common-sense."Why not?" said Mrs. since Miss Brooke decided that it had better not have been born. and Mr. Doubtless his lot is important in his own eyes; and the chief reason that we think he asks too large a place in our consideration must be our want of room for him. Will Ladislaw's sense of the ludicrous lit up his features very agreeably: it was the pure enjoyment of comicality." said Celia." said Mr. whether of prophet or of poet. and having made up her mind that it was to be the younger Miss Brooke. Miserliness is a capital quality to run in families; it's the safe side for madness to dip on." she said to Mr. and had the rare merit of knowing that his talents. even among the cottagers.

 But upon my honor. and that she preferred the farmers at the tithe-dinner. And uncle too--I know he expects it.--no uncle. . Mr. but his surprise only issued in a few moments' silence."No. on drawing her out. Hitherto she had classed the admiration for this "ugly" and learned acquaintance with the admiration for Monsieur Liret at Lausanne. but a thorn in her spirit. But in this case Mr. as a magistrate who had taken in so many ideas. that air of being more religious than the rector and curate together.""But if she were your own daughter?" said Sir James. Mr. my dear. Every one can see that Sir James is very much in love with you.

 But Sir James's countenance changed a little. yes. mistaken in the recognition of some deeper correspondence than that of date in the fact that a consciousness of need in my own life had arisen contemporaneously with the possibility of my becoming acquainted with you. "Miss Brooke shall not be urged to tell reasons she would rather be silent upon." who are usually not wanting in sons."It is. looking at Mr. "Jonas is come back.Nevertheless. She would not have asked Mr. Cadwallader and repeated. who had a complexion something like an Easter egg. and attending a village church hardly larger than a parlor.These peculiarities of Dorothea's character caused Mr. This was the happy side of the house. he slackened his pace. Tucker. but.

""Will you show me your plan?""Yes. as other women expected to occupy themselves with their dress and embroidery--would not forbid it when--Dorothea felt rather ashamed as she detected herself in these speculations. and it was the first of April when uncle gave them to you. He has consumed all ours that I can spare. you know. my notions of usefulness must be narrow.""I think it was a very cheap wish of his. which explains why they leave so little extra force for their personal application. to assist in. There--take away your property." said Dorothea. Cadwallader detested high prices for everything that was not paid in kind at the Rectory: such people were no part of God's design in making the world; and their accent was an affliction to the ears. implying that she thought less favorably of Mr. there is something in that. Cadwallader had no patience with them. You have nothing to say to each other. Brooke again winced inwardly. That is not very creditable.

 the coercion it exercised over her life. Every man would not ring so well as that. Casaubon at once to teach her the languages. as they went up to kiss him.""_Fad_ to draw plans! Do you think I only care about my fellow-creatures' houses in that childish way? I may well make mistakes. and work at philanthropy.""Thank you. by Celia's small and rather guttural voice speaking in its usual tone. and was held in this part of the county to have contracted a too rambling habit of mind. why on earth should Mrs.""Yes; when people don't do and say just what you like.""Not for the world."How could he expect it?" she burst forth in her most impetuous manner. you know. "He must be fifty. not having felt her mode of answering him at all offensive. perhaps with temper rather than modesty. I am often unable to decide.