eted all his behavior easily enough by
her supposition that Mr. Casaubon's codicil seemed to him, as it did to
her, a gross and cruel interdict on any active friendship between them.
Their young delight in speaking to each other, and saying what no one
else would care to hear, was forever ended, and become a treasure of
the past. For this very reason she dwelt on it without inward check.
That unique happiness too was dead, and in its shadowed silent chamber
she might vent the passionate grief which she herself wondered at. For
the first time she took down the miniature from the wall and kept it
before her, liking to blend the woman who had been too hardly judged
with the grandson whom her own heart and judgment defended. Can any
one who has rejoiced in woman's tenderness think it a reproach to her
that she took the little oval picture in her palm and made a bed for it
there, and leaned her cheek upon it, as if that would soothe the
creatures who had suffered unjust condemnation? She did not know then
that it was Love who had come to her briefly, as in a dream before
awaking, with the hues of morning on his wings--that it was Love to
whom she was sobbing her farewell as his image was banished by the
blameless rigor of irresistible day. She only felt that there was
something irrevocably amiss and lost in her lot, and her thoughts about
the future were the more readily shapen into resolve. Ardent souls,
ready to construct their coming lives, are apt to commit themselves to
the fulfilment of their own visions.

One day that she went to Freshitt to fulfil her promise of staying all
night and seeing baby washed, Mrs. Cadwallader came to dine, the Rector
being gone on a fishing excursion. It was a warm evening, and even in
the delightful drawing-room, where the fine old turf sloped from the
open window towards a lilied pool and well-planted mounds, the heat was
enough to make Celia in her white muslin and light curls reflect with
pity on what Dodo must feel in her black dress and close cap. But this
was not until some episodes with baby were over, and had left her mind
at leisure. She had seated herself and taken up a fan for some time
before she said, in her quiet guttural--

"Dear Dodo, do throw off that cap. I am sure your dress must make you
feel ill."

"I am so used to the cap--it has become a sort of shell," said
Dorothea, smiling. "I feel rather bare and exposed when it is off."

"I must see you without i