waking souls
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room, an everywhere."
--DR. DONNE.

On the second morning after Dorothea's visit to Rosamond, she had had
two nights of sound sleep, and had not only lost all traces of fatigue,
but felt as if she had a great deal of superfluous strength--that is
to say, more strength than she could manage to concentrate on any
occupation. The day before, she had taken long walks outside the
grounds, and had paid two visits to the Parsonage; but she never in her
life told any one the reason why she spent her time in that fruitless
manner, and this morning she was rather angry with herself for her
childish restlessness. To-day was to be spent quite differently. What
was there to be done in the village? Oh dear! nothing. Everybody was
well and had flannel; nobody's pig had died; and it was Saturday
morning, when there was a general scrubbing of doors and door-stones,
and when it was useless to go into the school. But there were various
subjects that Dorothea was trying to get clear upon, and she resolved
to throw herself energetically into the gravest of all. She sat down
in the library before her particular little heap of books on political
economy and kindred matters, out of which she was trying to get light
as to the best way of spending money so as not to injure one's
neighbors, or--what comes to the same thing--so as to do them the most
good. Here was a weighty subject which, if she could but lay hold of
it, would certainly keep her mind steady. Unhappily her mind slipped
off it for a whole hour; and at the end she found herself reading
sentences twice over with an intense consciousness of many things, but
not of any one thing contained in the text. This was hopeless. Should
she order the carriage and drive to Tipton? No; for some reason or
other she preferred staying at Lowick. But her vagrant mind must be
reduced to order: there was an art in self-discipline; and she walked
round and round the brown library considering by what sort of manoeuvre
she could arrest her wandering thoughts. Perhaps a mere task was the
best means--something to which she must go doggedly. Was there not the
geography of Asia Minor, in which her slackness had often been rebuked
by Mr. Casaubon? She went to the cabinet of maps and unrolled one:
this morning she might mak