"Oh yes," said Dorothea, cordially. "It will come; and I shall remember how well you wish me. I quite hoped that we should be friends when I first saw you--because of your relationship to Mr. Casaubon."There was a certain liquid brightness in her eyes, and Will was conscious that his own were obeying a law of nature and filling too.
The allusion to Mr. Casaubon would have spoiled all if anything at that moment could have spoiled the subduing power, the sweet dignity, of her noble unsuspicious inexperience.
"And there is one thing even now that you can do," said Dorothea, rising and walking a little way under the strength of a recurring impulse.
"Promise me that you will not again, to any one, speak of that subject--I mean about Mr. Casaubon's writings--I mean in that kind of way.
It was I who led to it. It was my fault. But promise me."She had returned from her brief pacing and stood opposite Will, looking gravely at him.
"Certainly, I will promise you," said Will, reddening however.
If he never said a cutting word about Mr. Casaubon again and left off receiving favors from him, it would clearly be permissible to hate him the more. The poet must know how to hate, says Goethe;and Will was at least ready with that accomplishment. He said that he must go now without waiting for Mr. Casaubon, whom he would come to take leave of at the last moment. Dorothea gave him her hand, and they exchanged a simple "Good-by."But going out of the porte cochere he met Mr. Casaubon, and that gentleman, expressing the best wishes for his cousin, politely waived the pleasure of any further leave-taking on the morrow, which would be sufficiently crowded with the preparations for departure.
"I have something to tell you about our cousin Mr. Ladislaw, which I think will heighten your opinion of him," said Dorothea to her husband in the coarse of the evening. She had mentioned immediately on his entering that Will had just gone away, and would come again, but Mr. Casaubon had said, "I met him outside, and we made our final adieux, I believe," saying this with the air and tone by which we imply that any subject, whether private or public, does not interest us enough to wish for a further remark upon it.
So Dorothea had waited.
"What is that, my love?" said Mr Casaubon (he always said "my love"when his manner was the coldest).
"He has made up his mind to leave off wandering at once, and to give up his dependence on your generosity. He means soon to go back to England, and work his own way. I thought you would consider that a good sign,"said Dorothea, with an appealing look into her husband's neutral face.
"Did he mention the precise order of occupation to which he would addict himself?""No. But he said that he felt the danger which lay for him in your generosity. Of course he will write to you about it.
Do you not think better of him for his resolve?""I shall await his communication on the subject," said Mr. Casaubon.
"I told him I was sure that the thing you considered in all you did for him was his own welfare. I remembered your goodness in what you said about him when I first saw him at Lowick," said Dorothea, putting her hand on her husband's"I had a duty towards him," said Mr. Casaubon, laying his other hand on Dorothea's in conscientious acceptance of her caress, but with a glance which he could not hinder from being uneasy.
"The young man, I confess, is not otherwise an object of interest to me, nor need we, I think, discuss his future course, which it is not ours to determine beyond the limits which I have sufficiently indicated."Dorothea did not mention Will again.
