Poor Adam!  Thus do men blunder.

Lisbeth opened his eyes on the Sunday morning when Adam sat at home and read from his large pictured Bible.

For a long time his mother talked on about Dinah, and about how they were losing her when they might keep her, and Adam at last told her she must make up her mind that she would have to do without Dinah.

“Nay, but I canna ma’ up my mind, when she’s just cut out for thee; an’ nought shall ma’ me believe as God didna make her and send her here o’ purpose for thee.  What’s it sinnify about her being a Methody?  It ’ud happen wear out on her wi’ marryin’.”

Adam threw himself back in his chair and looked at his mother.  He understood now what her talk had been aiming at, and tried to chase away the notion from her mind.

He was amazed at the way in which this new thought of Dinah’s love had taken possession of him with an overmastering power that made all other feelings give way before the impetuous desire to know that the thought was true.  He spoke to Seth, who said quite simply that he had long given up all thoughts of Dinah ever being his wife, and would rejoice in his brother’s joy.  But he could not tell whether Dinah was for marrying.

“Thee might’st ask her,” Seth said presently.  “She took no offence at me for asking, and thee’st more right than I had.”

When Adam did ask, Dinah answered that her heart was strongly drawn towards him, but that she must wait for divine guidance.  So she left the Hall Farm and went back to the town, and Adam waited,—­and then went after her to get his answer.

“Adam,” she said when they had met and walked some distance together, “it is the divine will.  My soul is so knit to yours that it is but a divided life I live without you.  And this moment, now you are with me, and I feel that our hearts are filled with the same love, I have a fullness of strength to bear and do our Heavenly Father’s will that I had lost before.”

Adam paused and looked into her sincere eyes.

“Then we’ll never part any more, Dinah, till death parts us.”

And they kissed each other with deep joy.

* * * * *

Felix Holt, the Radical

“Felix Holt, the Radical,” was published in 1866.  It has never been one of George Eliot’s very popular books.  There is less in it of her own life and experience than in most of her novels, less of the homely wit of agricultural England.  The real value of the book is the picture it gives of the social and political life, and for this reason, it will always be read by those who want to know what English political methods and customs were like at the time of the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832.  The character of Mr. Rufus Lyon, the independent minister, is an admirable study of the non-conformist of that period.  Esther’s renunciation of a brilliant fortune for a humbler lot with the man she loved and admired, was quite in accord with the teaching George Eliot inculcated all her life.  The scene of the story is laid in the Midlands, and the action, covering about nine months, begins in 1832.

I.—­The Minister’s Daughter