his
preoccupation in observing Dorothea. Ladislaw had made up his mind
that she must be an unpleasant girl, since she was going to marry
Casaubon, and what she said of her stupidity about pictures would have
confirmed that opinion even if he had believed her. As it was, he took
her words for a covert judgment, and was certain that she thought his
sketch detestable. There was too much cleverness in her apology: she
was laughing both at her uncle and himself. But what a voice! It was
like the voice of a soul that had once lived in an AEolian harp. This
must be one of Nature's inconsistencies. There could be no sort of
passion in a girl who would marry Casaubon. But he turned from her,
and bowed his thanks for Mr. Brooke's invitation.

"We will turn over my Italian engravings together," continued that
good-natured man. "I have no end of those things, that I have laid by
for years. One gets rusty in this part of the country, you know. Not
you, Casaubon; you stick to your studies; but my best ideas get
undermost--out of use, you know. You clever young men must guard
against indolence. I was too indolent, you know: else I might have
been anywhere at one time."

"That is a seasonable admonition," said Mr. Casaubon; "but now we will
pass on to the house, lest the young ladies should be tired of
standing."

When their backs were turned, young Ladislaw sat down to go on with his
sketching, and as he did so his face broke into an expression of
amusement which increased as he went on drawing, till at last he threw
back his head and laughed aloud. Partly it was the reception of his
own artistic production that tickled him; partly the notion of his
grave cousin as the lover of that girl; and partly Mr. Brooke's
definition of the place he might have held but for the impediment of
indolence. Mr. Will Ladislaw's sense of the ludicrous lit up his
features very agreeably: it was the pure enjoyment of comicality, and
had no mixture of sneering and self-exaltation.

"What is your nephew going to do with himself, Casaubon?" said Mr.
Brooke, as they went on.

"My cousin, you mean--not my nephew."

"Yes, yes, cousin. But in the way of a career, you know."

"The answer to that question is painfully doubtful. On leaving Rugby
he declined to go to an English university, where I would gladly have
placed him, and chose what I must consider the anomalous course of
studying at Heidelberg. And now he wants to go abroad again