t the early
Church. The oppression of Celia, Tantripp, and Sir James was shaken
off, and she walked straight to the library. Celia went up-stairs. Mr.
Brooke was detained by a message, but when he re-entered the library,
he found Dorothea seated and already deep in one of the pamphlets which
had some marginal manuscript of Mr. Casaubon's,--taking it in as
eagerly as she might have taken in the scent of a fresh bouquet after a
dry, hot, dreary walk.

She was getting away from Tipton and Freshitt, and her own sad
liability to tread in the wrong places on her way to the New Jerusalem.

Mr. Brooke sat down in his arm-chair, stretched his legs towards the
wood-fire, which had fallen into a wondrous mass of glowing dice
between the dogs, and rubbed his hands gently, looking very mildly
towards Dorothea, but with a neutral leisurely air, as if he had
nothing particular to say. Dorothea closed her pamphlet, as soon as
she was aware of her uncle's presence, and rose as if to go. Usually
she would have been interested about her uncle's merciful errand on
behalf of the criminal, but her late agitation had made her
absent-minded.

"I came back by Lowick, you know," said Mr. Brooke, not as if with any
intention to arrest her departure, but apparently from his usual
tendency to say what he had said before. This fundamental principle of
human speech was markedly exhibited in Mr. Brooke. "I lunched there
and saw Casaubon's library, and that kind of thing. There's a sharp
air, driving. Won't you sit down, my dear? You look cold."

Dorothea felt quite inclined to accept the invitation. Some times,
when her uncle's easy way of taking things did not happen to be
exasperating, it was rather soothing. She threw off her mantle and
bonnet, and sat down opposite to him, enjoying the glow, but lifting up
her beautiful hands for a screen. They were not thin hands, or small
hands; but powerful, feminine, maternal hands. She seemed to be
holding them up in propitiation for her passionate desire to know and
to think, which in the unfriendly mediums of Tipton and Freshitt had
issued in crying and red eyelids.

She bethought herself now of the condemned criminal. "What news have
you brought about the sheep-stealer, uncle?"

"What, poor Bunch?--well, it seems we can't get him off--he is to be
hanged."

Dorothea's brow took an expression of reprobation and pity.

"Hanged, you know," said Mr. Brooke, with a quiet nod. "Poor Romil