she choose if she has
no variety to choose from? A woman's choice usually means taking the
only man she can get. Mark my words, Humphrey. If her friends don't
exert themselves, there will be a worse business than the Casaubon
business yet."

"For heaven's sake don't touch on that topic, Elinor! It is a very sore
point with Sir James He would be deeply offended if you entered on it
to him unnecessarily."

"I have never entered on it," said Mrs Cadwallader, opening her hands.
"Celia told me all about the will at the beginning, without any asking
of mine."

"Yes, yes; but they want the thing hushed up, and I understand that the
young fellow is going out of the neighborhood."

Mrs. Cadwallader said nothing, but gave her husband three significant
nods, with a very sarcastic expression in her dark eyes.

Dorothea quietly persisted in spite of remonstrance and persuasion. So
by the end of June the shutters were all opened at Lowick Manor, and
the morning gazed calmly into the library, shining on the rows of
note-books as it shines on the weary waste planted with huge stones,
the mute memorial of a forgotten faith; and the evening laden with
roses entered silently into the blue-green boudoir where Dorothea chose
oftenest to sit. At first she walked into every room, questioning the
eighteen months of her married life, and carrying on her thoughts as if
they were a speech to be heard by her husband. Then, she lingered in
the library and could not be at rest till she had carefully ranged all
the note-books as she imagined that he would wish to see them, in
orderly sequence. The pity which had been the restraining compelling
motive in her life with him still clung about his image, even while she
remonstrated with him in indignant thought and told him that he was
unjust. One little act of hers may perhaps be smiled at as
superstitious. The Synoptical Tabulation for the use of Mrs. Casaubon,
she carefully enclosed and sealed, writing within the envelope, "I
could not use it. Do you not see now that I could not submit my soul
to yours, by working hopelessly at what I have no belief in--Dorothea?"
Then she deposited the paper in her own desk.

That silent colloquy was perhaps only the more earnest because
underneath and through it all there was always the deep longing which
had really determined her to come to Lowick. The longing was to see
Will Ladislaw. She did not know any good that could come of their
meeting: