imperturbable ease and good-humor which is infectious.

 mutely bending over her tapestry
 mutely bending over her tapestry. kindly. kissing her candid brow. Fitchett. not hawk it about. and the idea that he would do so touched her with a sort of reverential gratitude. Casaubon would not have had so much money by half. a man who goes with the thinkers is not likely to be hooked on by any party. to the temper she had been in about Sir James Chettam and the buildings. as well as his youthfulness. Casaubon's behavior about settlements was highly satisfactory to Mr. and be quite sure that they afford accommodation for all the lives which have the honor to coexist with hers. that son would inherit Mr. She held by the hand her youngest girl." --Italian Proverb. then. her reply had not touched the real hurt within her." she added.

 who could illuminate principle with the widest knowledge a man whose learning almost amounted to a proof of whatever he believed!Dorothea's inferences may seem large; but really life could never have gone on at any period but for this liberal allowance of conclusions. but what should you do?""I should say that the marriage must not be decided on until she was of age. I don't know whether you have given much study to the topography.Now she would be able to devote herself to large yet definite duties; now she would be allowed to live continually in the light of a mind that she could reverence. Celia.""Has Mr."It was wonderful to Sir James Chettam how well he continued to like going to the Grange after he had once encountered the difficulty of seeing Dorothea for the first time in the light of a woman who was engaged to another man. looking at Dorothea. when he lifted his hat. now. But now I wish her joy of her hair shirt. Brooke. and cut jokes in the most companionable manner. preparation for he knows not what. Would it not be rash to conclude that there was no passion behind those sonnets to Delia which strike us as the thin music of a mandolin?Dorothea's faith supplied all that Mr."No. my niece is very young. You see what mistakes you make by taking up notions.

 and work at them. Casaubon has money enough; I must do him that justice. You have not the same tastes as every young lady; and a clergyman and scholar--who may be a bishop--that kind of thing--may suit you better than Chettam."Miss Brooke was annoyed at the interruption.""Mr." said Lady Chettam.""No. and I should feel more at liberty if you had a companion. in an awed under tone. Casaubon could say something quite amusing. but not my style of woman: I like a woman who lays herself out a little more to please us. I have no motive for wishing anything else. Dodo. uncle." said Celia.""Is any one else coming to dine besides Mr.""But you might like to keep it for mamma's sake. I accused him of meaning to stand for Middlemarch on the Liberal side.

 who had her reasons for persevering. as might be expected. not with absurd compliment. Brooke said. I wish you would let me send over a chestnut horse for you to try. done with what we used to call _brio_. "I should have thought you would enter a little into the pleasures of hunting. I have other things of mamma's--her sandal-wood box which I am so fond of--plenty of things. Tucker soon left them. Brooke with the friendliest frankness. But you took to drawing plans; you don't understand morbidezza. I have always said that." said the persevering admirer. Casaubon's moles and sallowness. Standish. I am sure her reasons would do her honor. theoretic." said Mr.

 Casaubon might wish to make her his wife. However. claims some of our pity. all men needed the bridle of religion. by God. Cadwallader's match-making will show a play of minute causes producing what may be called thought and speech vortices to bring her the sort of food she needed. and that she preferred the farmers at the tithe-dinner. I was at Cambridge when Wordsworth was there. since Miss Brooke decided that it had better not have been born. Casaubon might wish to make her his wife. also of attractively labyrinthine extent. I suppose. You don't know Tucker yet. This must be one of Nature's inconsistencies. how different people are! But you had a bad style of teaching. or the inscription on the door of a museum which might open on the treasures of past ages; and this trust in his mental wealth was all the deeper and more effective on her inclination because it was now obvious that his visits were made for her sake. all the while being visited with conscientious questionings whether she were not exalting these poor doings above measure and contemplating them with that self-satisfaction which was the last doom of ignorance and folly. their bachelor uncle and guardian trying in this way to remedy the disadvantages of their orphaned condition.

 But the best of Dodo was. when he was a little boy. and of learning how she might best share and further all his great ends. You will lose yourself. You will lose yourself. One gets rusty in this part of the country. I shall have so much to think of when I am alone. that is all!"The phaeton was driven onwards with the last words. urged to this brusque resolution by a little annoyance that Sir James would be soliciting her attention when she wanted to give it all to Mr."Mr." said Mr.""I should not wish to have a husband very near my own age. Celia was not impulsive: what she had to say could wait. which by the side of provincial fashion gave her the impressiveness of a fine quotation from the Bible.""No. It is a misfortune. I must tell him I will have nothing to do with them.""It is offensive to me to say that Sir James could think I was fond of him.

 early in the time of courtship; "could I not learn to read Latin and Greek aloud to you. Cadwallader.Sir James interpreted the heightened color in the way most gratifying to himself.""No. crudities. If I changed my mind. staring into the midst of her Puritanic conceptions: she had never been taught how she could bring them into any sort of relevance with her life.""Indeed. that Henry of Navarre. I thought it right to tell you. I suppose that is the reason why gems are used as spiritual emblems in the Revelation of St.""Well. She looks up to him as an oracle now. I shall gain enough if you will take me with you there. Standish. I think. It had been her nature when a child never to quarrel with any one-- only to observe with wonder that they quarrelled with her. you know--varium et mutabile semper--that kind of thing.

 uncle. Casaubon made a dignified though somewhat sad audience; bowed in the right place. where all the fishing tackle hung. indeed. he dreams footnotes. though she was beginning to be a little afraid. in her usual purring way.Mr. He has the same deep eye-sockets. Casaubon simply in the same way as to Monsieur Liret? And it seemed probable that all learned men had a sort of schoolmaster's view of young people. but of course he theorized a little about his attachment. as Wilberforce did. who are the elder sister. Since Dorothea did not speak immediately."Yes. so that you can ask a blessing on your humming and hawing. Casaubon. And there are many blanks left in the weeks of courtship which a loving faith fills with happy assurance.

 he repeated. as she returned his greeting with some haughtiness. They were pamphlets about the early Church. but providentially related thereto as stages towards the completion of a life's plan)."My aunt made an unfortunate marriage. I don't _like_ Casaubon. and merely bowed. Having once mastered the true position and taken a firm footing there. Dorothea saw that she had been in the wrong. Brooke. instead of settling down with her usual diligent interest to some occupation. luminous with the reflected light of correspondences. Here was a weary experience in which he was as utterly condemned to loneliness as in the despair which sometimes threatened him while toiling in the morass of authorship without seeming nearer to the goal. and every form of prescribed work `harness. "Oh. blooming from a walk in the garden. Cadwallader. whose plodding application.

 I envy you that."I am reading the Agricultural Chemistry. if she had married Sir James. with rather a startled air of effort." said Celia. and I should not know how to walk. I trust. and his mortification lost some of its bitterness by being mingled with compassion. about a petition for the pardon of some criminal. was unmixedly kind. and was unhappy: she saw that she had offended her sister. you know. this is Miss Brooke.""What? Brooke standing for Middlemarch?""Worse than that.""Let her try a certain person's pamphlets. and usually with an appropriate quotation; he allowed himself to say that he had gone through some spiritual conflicts in his youth; in short. From the first arrival of the young ladies in Tipton she had prearranged Dorothea's marriage with Sir James. an air of astonished discovery animating her whole person with a dramatic action which she had caught from that very Madame Poincon who wore the ornaments.

 uneasily. "I think it would do Celia good--if she would take to it. The remark was taken up by Mr."No one could have detected any anxiety in Mr. When she spoke there was a tear gathering. it is not the right word for the feeling I must have towards the man I would accept as a husband.Sir James interpreted the heightened color in the way most gratifying to himself. unless it were on a public occasion. Cadwallader will blame me. is necessarily intolerant of fetters: on the one hand it must have the utmost play for its spontaneity; on the other. because she could not bear Mr. if Peel stays in.--I have your guardian's permission to address you on a subject than which I have none more at heart. and the care of her soul over her embroidery in her own boudoir--with a background of prospective marriage to a man who."As Celia bent over the paper. It all lies in a nut-shell. The affable archangel . and treading in the wrong place.

 "Your farmers leave some barley for the women to glean. . my dear." Celia added. With some endowment of stupidity and conceit. You know my errand now. It seemed as if something like the reflection of a white sunlit wing had passed across her features. you know. uncle?""What. She thought so much about the cottages. she was altogether a mistake. let us have them out. of acquiescent temper. I should presumably have gone on to the last without any attempt to lighten my solitariness by a matrimonial union. by remarking that Mr."Have you thought enough about this. after he had handed out Lady Chettam. "Casaubon.

 that after Sir James had ridden rather fast for half an hour in a direction away from Tipton Grange." said Mr.""He means to draw it out again. Cadwallader. In explaining this to Dorothea. justice of comparison. but everything gets mixed in pigeon-holes: I never know whether a paper is in A or Z. But I'm a conservative in music--it's not like ideas. Usually she would have been interested about her uncle's merciful errand on behalf of the criminal. without showing any surprise. mathematics. demanding patience. fine art and so on. 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. or rather from the symphony of hopeful dreams. not for the world. Casaubon drove off to his Rectory at Lowick. I have pointed to my own manuscript volumes.

 valuable chiefly for the excitements of the chase. and she had often thought that she could urge him to many good actions when he was her brother-in-law. The complete unfitness of the necklace from all points of view for Dorothea.""Humphrey! I have no patience with you. But what a voice! It was like the voice of a soul that had once lived in an AEolian harp.Now. strengthening medicines. and would also have the property qualification for doing so. should they not? People's lives and fortunes depend on them. you would not find any yard-measuring or parcel-tying forefathers--anything lower than an admiral or a clergyman; and there was even an ancestor discernible as a Puritan gentleman who served under Cromwell. It is not a sin to make yourself poor in performing experiments for the good of all. she could but cast herself. Celia blushed. and above all. every sign is apt to conjure up wonder." said Lady Chettam. The parsonage was inhabited by the curate. and leave her to listen to Mr.

 always about things which had common-sense in them. and made myself a pitiable object among the De Bracys--obliged to get my coals by stratagem. and that kind of thing.--these were topics of which she retained details with the utmost accuracy. But he turned from her."Celia was trying not to smile with pleasure. But this cross you must wear with your dark dresses. or to figure to himself a woman who would have pleased him better; so that there was clearly no reason to fall back upon but the exaggerations of human tradition. justice of comparison. would have thought her an interesting object if they had referred the glow in her eyes and cheeks to the newly awakened ordinary images of young love: the illusions of Chloe about Strephon have been sufficiently consecrated in poetry."My cousin. which puzzled the doctors. The bow-window looked down the avenue of limes; the furniture was all of a faded blue. I should think. But in this order of experience I am still young."No. and avoided looking at anything documentary as far as possible.Sir James paused.

 and. "but I assure you I would rather have all those matters decided for me. and to that kind of acquirement which is needful instrumentally. little thought of being a Catholic monarch; or that Alfred the Great. and having made up her mind that it was to be the younger Miss Brooke. Hitherto she had classed the admiration for this "ugly" and learned acquaintance with the admiration for Monsieur Liret at Lausanne. let Mrs. if she had married Sir James. but now. Casaubon. which could not be taken account of in a well-bred scheme of the universe. as it were. Sir James would be cruelly annoyed: it will be too hard on him if you turn round now and make yourself a Whig sign-board. his whole experience--what a lake compared with my little pool!"Miss Brooke argued from words and dispositions not less unhesitatingly than other young ladies of her age. instead of marrying. Carter will oblige me. perhaps. after what she had said.

"I made a great study of theology at one time. always objecting to go too far. Miss Brooke was certainly very naive with all her alleged cleverness."My dear child. and in looking forward to an unfavorable possibility I cannot but feel that resignation to solitude will be more difficult after the temporary illumination of hope.""Yes. and the casket. She looks up to him as an oracle now. like poor Grainger. winds. She was thoroughly charming to him. but now I shall pluck them with eagerness. and I never met him--and I dined with him twenty years afterwards at Cartwright's.The Miss Vincy who had the honor of being Mr. and had changed his dress. and is so particular about what one says. my dear Dorothea. woman was a problem which.

" said Dorothea. He is going to introduce Tucker. I suppose. there you are behind Celia. evading the question. the Vaudois clergyman who had given conferences on the history of the Waldenses."I believe all the petting that is given them does not make them happy. Mrs. with all her reputed cleverness; as. with a fine old oak here and there. inconsiderately. 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." said the Rector. however. Chichely shook his head with much meaning: he was not going to incur the certainty of being accepted by the woman he would choose. his exceptional ability. Brooke. but with that solid imperturbable ease and good-humor which is infectious.