ght be the mercy for those
sorrows--but the resolved submission did come; and when the house was
still, and she knew that it was near the time when Mr. Casaubon
habitually went to rest, she opened her door gently and stood outside
in the darkness waiting for his coming up-stairs with a light in his
hand. If he did not come soon she thought that she would go down and
even risk incurring another pang. She would never again expect
anything else. But she did hear the library door open, and slowly the
light advanced up the staircase without noise from the footsteps on the
carpet. When her husband stood opposite to her, she saw that his face
was more haggard. He started slightly on seeing her, and she looked up
at him beseechingly, without speaking.

"Dorothea!" he said, with a gentle surprise in his tone. "Were you
waiting for me?"

"Yes, I did not like to disturb you."

"Come, my dear, come. You are young, and need not to extend your life
by watching."

When the kind quiet melancholy of that speech fell on Dorothea's ears,
she felt something like the thankfulness that might well up in us if we
had narrowly escaped hurting a lamed creature. She put her hand into
her husband's, and they went along the broad corridor together.

BOOK V.

THE DEAD HAND.

CHAPTER XLIII.

This figure hath high price: 't was wrought with love
Ages ago in finest ivory;
Nought modish in it, pure and noble lines
Of generous womanhood that fits all time
That too is costly ware; majolica
Of deft design, to please a lordly eye:
The smile, you see, is perfect--wonderful
As mere Faience! a table ornament
To suit the richest mounting."

Dorothea seldom left home without her husband, but she did occasionally
drive into Middlemarch alone, on little errands of shopping or charity
such as occur to every lady of any wealth when she lives within three
miles of a town. Two days after that scene in the Yew-tree Walk, she
determined to use such an opportunity in order if possible to see
Lydgate, and learn from him whether her husband had really felt any
depressing change of symptoms which he was concealing from her, and
whether he had insisted on knowing the utmost about himself. She felt
almost guilty in asking for knowledge about him from another, but the
dread of being without it--the dread of that ignorance which would make
her unjust or hard--overcame every scruple. That there h