re in the room seemed to have shrunk since
she saw it before: the slag in the tapestry looked more like a ghost in
his ghostly blue-green world; the volumes of polite literature in the
bookcase looked more like immovable imitations of books. The bright
fire of dry oak-boughs burning on the dogs seemed an incongruous
renewal of life and glow--like the figure of Dorothea herself as she
entered carrying the red-leather cases containing the cameos for Celia.

She was glowing from her morning toilet as only healthful youth can
glow: there was gem-like brightness on her coiled hair and in her hazel
eyes; there was warm red life in her lips; her throat had a breathing
whiteness above the differing white of the fur which itself seemed to
wind about her neck and cling down her blue-gray pelisse with a
tenderness gathered from her own, a sentient commingled innocence which
kept its loveliness against the crystalline purity of the outdoor snow.
As she laid the cameo-cases on the table in the bow-window, she
unconsciously kept her hands on them, immediately absorbed in looking
out on the still, white enclosure which made her visible world.

Mr. Casaubon, who had risen early complaining of palpitation, was in
the library giving audience to his curate Mr. Tucker. By-and-by Celia
would come in her quality of bridesmaid as well as sister, and through
the next weeks there would be wedding visits received and given; all in
continuance of that transitional life understood to correspond with the
excitement of bridal felicity, and keeping up the sense of busy
ineffectiveness, as of a dream which the dreamer begins to suspect.
The duties of her married life, contemplated as so great beforehand,
seemed to be shrinking with the furniture and the white vapor-walled
landscape. The clear heights where she expected to walk in full
communion had become difficult to see even in her imagination; the
delicious repose of the soul on a complete superior had been shaken
into uneasy effort and alarmed with dim presentiment. When would the
days begin of that active wifely devotion which was to strengthen her
husband's life and exalt her own? Never perhaps, as she had
preconceived them; but somehow--still somehow. In this solemnly
pledged union of her life, duty would present itself in some new form
of inspiration and give a new meaning to wifely love.

Meanwhile there was the snow and the low arch of dun vapor--there was
the stifling oppression of