thea's conscience shrank from,
seeing that she already began to feel herself guilty. However just her
indignation might be, her ideal was not to claim justice, but to give
tenderness. So when the carriage came to the door, she drove with Mr.
Casaubon to the Vatican, walked with him through the stony avenue of
inscriptions, and when she parted with him at the entrance to the
Library, went on through the Museum out of mere listlessness as to what
was around her. She had not spirit to turn round and say that she
would drive anywhere. It was when Mr. Casaubon was quitting her that
Naumann had first seen her, and he had entered the long gallery of
sculpture at the same time with her; but here Naumann had to await
Ladislaw with whom he was to settle a bet of champagne about an
enigmatical mediaeval-looking figure there. After they had examined
the figure, and had walked on finishing their dispute, they had parted,
Ladislaw lingering behind while Naumann had gone into the Hall of
Statues where he again saw Dorothea, and saw her in that brooding
abstraction which made her pose remarkable. She did not really see the
streak of sunlight on the floor more than she saw the statues: she was
inwardly seeing the light of years to come in her own home and over the
English fields and elms and hedge-bordered highroads; and feeling that
the way in which they might be filled with joyful devotedness was not
so clear to her as it had been. But in Dorothea's mind there was a
current into which all thought and feeling were apt sooner or later to
flow--the reaching forward of the whole consciousness towards the
fullest truth, the least partial good. There was clearly something
better than anger and despondency.

CHAPTER XXI.

"Hire facounde eke full womanly and plain,
No contrefeted termes had she
To semen wise."
--CHAUCER.

It was in that way Dorothea came to be sobbing as soon as she was
securely alone. But she was presently roused by a knock at the door,
which made her hastily dry her eyes before saying, "Come in." Tantripp
had brought a card, and said that there was a gentleman waiting in the
lobby. The courier had told him that only Mrs. Casaubon was at home,
but he said he was a relation of Mr. Casaubon's: would she see him?

"Yes," said Dorothea, without pause; "show him into the salon." Her
chief impressions about young Ladislaw were that when she had seen him
at Lowick she had