Neither of them felt it possible to speak again at
present. To have reversed a previous arrangement
and declined to go out would have been a show of persistent
anger which Dorothea’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 been made aware of Mr. Casaubon’s
generosity towards him, and also that she had been
interested in his own hesitation about his career.
She was alive to anything that gave her an opportunity
for active sympathy, and at this moment it seemed
as if the visit had come to shake her out of her self-absorbed
