"Thank you;" said Dorothea, exerting herself, "I am sure that is wise.

There are so many things which I ought to attend to. Why should I sit
here idle?" Then, with an effort to recall subjects not connected with

her agitation, she added, abruptly, "You know every one in Middlemarch,
I think, Mr. Lydgate. I shall ask you to tell me a great deal.

I have serious things to do now. I have a living to give away.
You know Mr. Tyke and all the--" But Dorothea's effort was too much

for her; she broke off and burst into sobs. Lydgate made her drink
a dose of sal volatile.

"Let Mrs. Casaubon do as she likes," he said to Sir James, whom he
asked to see before quitting the house. "She wants perfect freedom,

I think, more than any other prescription."
His attendance on Dorothea while her brain was excited, had enabled

him to form some true conclusions concerning the trials of her life.
He felt sure that she had been suffering from the strain and

conflict of self-repression; and that she was likely now to feel
herself only in another sort of pinfold than that from which she

had been released.
Lydgate's advice was all the easier for Sir James to follow

when he found that Celia had already told Dorothea the unpleasant
fact about the will. There was no help for it now--no reason

for any further delay in the execution of necessary business.
And the next day Sir James complied at once with her request

that he would drive her to Lowick.
"I have no wish to stay there at present," said Dorothea;

"I could hardly bear it. I am much happier at Freshitt with Celia.
I shall be able to think better about what should be done at Lowick

by looking at it from a distance. And I should like to be at the
Grange a little while with my uncle, and go about in all the old

walks and among the people in the village."
"Not yet, I think. Your uncle is having political company,

and you are better out of the way of such doings," said Sir James,
who at that moment thought of the Grange chiefly as a haunt

of young Ladislaw's. But no word passed between him and Dorothea
about the objectionable part of the will; indeed, both of them

felt that the mention of it between them would be impossible.
Sir James was shy, even with men, about disagreeable subjects;

and the one thing that Dorothea would have chosen to say, if she
had spoken on the matter at all, was forbidden to her at present

because it seemed to be a further exposure of her husband's injustice.
Yet she did wish that Sir James could know what had passed between her

and her husband about Will Ladislaw's moral claim on the property:
it would then, she thought, be apparent to him as it was to her,

that her husband's strange indelicate proviso had been chiefly urged
by his bitter resistance to that idea of claim, and not merely

by personal feelings more difficult to talk about. Also, it must
be admitted, Dorothea wished that this could be known for Will's sake,

since her friends seemed to think of him as simply an object of
Mr. Casaubon's charity. Why should he be compared with an Italian

carrying white mice? That word quoted from Mrs. Cadwallader seemed
like a mocking travesty wrought in the dark by an impish finger.

At Lowick Dorothea searched desk and drawer--searched all her
husband's places of deposit for private writing, but found no paper

addressed especially to her, except that "Synoptical Tabulation,"
which was probably only the beginning of many intended directions

for her guidance. In carrying out this bequest of labor to Dorothea,
as in all else, Mr. Casaubon had been slow and hesitating, oppressed in

the plan of transmitting his work, as he had been in executing it,
by the sense of moving heavily in a dim and clogging medium:

distrust of Dorothea's competence to arrange what he had prepared
was subdued only by distrust of any other redactor. But he had come

at last to create a trust for himself out of Dorothea's nature:
she could do what she resolved to do: and he willingly imagined her

toiling under the fetters of a promise to erect a tomb with his name
upon it. (Not that Mr. Casaubon called the future volumes a tomb;

he called them the Key to all Mythologies.) But the months gained
on him and left his plans belated: he had only had time to ask

for that promise by which he sought to keep his cold grasp on
Dorothea's life.

The grasp had slipped away. Bound by a pledge given from the
depths of her pity, she would have been capable of undertaking

a toil which her judgment whispered was vain for all uses except
that consecration of faithfulness which is a supreme use. But now

her judgment, instead of being controlled by duteous devotion,
was made active by the imbittering discovery that in her past union

there had lurked the hidden alienation of secrecy and suspicion.
The living, suffering man was no longer before her to awaken

her pity: there remained only the retrospect of painful subjection
to a husband whose thoughts had been lower than she had believed,

whose exorbitant claims for himself had even blinded his scrupulous
care for his own character, and made him defeat his own pride by

shocking men of ordinary honor. As for the property which was the
sign of that broken tie, she would have been glad to be free from

it and have nothing more than her original fortune which had been
settled on her, if there had not been duties attached to ownership,

which she ought not to flinch from. About this property many
troublous questions insisted on rising: had she not been right

in thinking that the half of it ought to go to Will Ladislaw?--
but was it not impossible now for her to do that act of justice?

Mr. Casaubon had taken a cruellyeffective means of hindering her:
even with indignation against him in her heart, any act that seemed a

triumphant eluding of his purpose revolted her.
After collecting papers of business which she wished to examine,

she locked up again the desks and drawers--all empty of personal
words for her--empty of any sign that in her husband's lonely

brooding his heart had gone out to her in excuse or explanation;
and she went back to Freshitt with the sense that around his last hard

demand and his last injuriousassertion of his power, the silence
was unbroken.

Dorothea tried now to turn her thoughts towards immediate duties,
and one of these was of a kind which others were determined to remind

her of. Lydgate's ear had caught eagerly her mention of the living,
and as soon as he could, he reopened the subject, seeing here a

possibility of making amends for the casting-vote he had once given
with an ill-satisfied conscience. "Instead of telling you anything

about Mr. Tyke," he said, "I should like to speak of another man--
Mr. Farebrother, the Vicar of St. Botolph's. His living is a poor one,

and gives him a stinted provision for himself and his family.
His mother, aunt, and sister all live with him, and depend upon him.

I believe he has never married because of them. I never heard
such good preaching" target="_blank" title="n.说教 a.说教的">preaching as his--such plain, easy eloquence. He would

have done to preach at St. Paul's Cross after old Latimer. His talk
is just as good about all subjects: original, simple, clear.

I think him a remarkable fellow: he ought to have done more than he
has done."

"Why has he not done more?" said Dorothea, interested now in all
who had slipped below their own intention.

"That's a hard question," said Lydgate. "I find myself that it's
uncommonly difficult to make the right thing work: there are so many

strings pulling at once. Farebrother often hints that he has got
into the wrong profession; he wants a wider range than that of a

poor clergyman, and I suppose he has no interest to help him on.
He is very fond of Natural History and various scientific matters,

and he is hampered in reconciling these tastes with his position.
He has no money to spare--hardly enough to use; and that has led

him into card-playing--Middlemarch is a great place for whist.
He does play for money, and he wins a good deal. Of course that