After shaking hands with Dorothea, he bowed as slightly as possible
to Ladislaw, who repaid the slightness exactly, and then going

towards Dorothea, said--
"I must say good-by, Mrs. Casaubon; and probably for a long while."

Dorothea put out her hand and said her good-by cordially. The sense
that Sir James was depreciating Will, and behaving rudely to him,

roused her resolution and dignity-there was no touch of confusion
in her manner. And when Will had left the room, she looked with

such calm self-possession at Sir James, saying, "How is Celia?"
that he was obliged to behave as if nothing had annoyed him.

And what would be the use of behaving otherwise? Indeed, Sir James
shrank with so much dislike from the association even in thought

of Dorothea with Ladislaw as her possible lover, that he would himself
have wished to avoid an outward show of displeasure which would

have recognized the disagreeablepossibility. If any one had asked
him why he shrank in that way, I am not sure that he would at first

have said anything fuller or more precise than "THAT Ladislaw!"--
though on reflection" target="_blank" title="n.反射；映象；想法">reflection he might have urged that Mr. Casaubon's codicil,

barring Dorothea's marriage with Will, except under a penalty,
was enough to cast unfitness over any relation at all between them.

His aversion was all the stronger because he felt himself unable
to interfere.

But Sir James was a power in a way unguessed by himself. Entering
at that moment, he was an incorporation of the strongest reasons

through which Will's pride became a repellent force, keeping him
asunder from Dorothea.

CHAPTER LV.
Hath she her faults? I would you had them too.

They are the fruity must of soundest wine;
Or say, they are regenerating fire

Such as hath turned the dense black element
Into a crystalpathway for the sun.

If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense
that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth

to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of
their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new.

We are told that the oldest inhabitants in Peru do not cease to be
agitated by the earthquakes, but they probably see beyond each shock,

and reflect that there are plenty more to come.
To Dorothea, still in that time of youth when the eyes with their long

full lashes look out after their rain of tears unsoiled and unwearied
as a freshly opened passion-flower, that morning's parting with Will

Ladislaw seemed to be the close of their personal relations.
He was going away into the distance of unknown years, and if ever he

came back he would be another man. The actual state of his mind--
his proud resolve to give the lie beforehand to any suspicion

that he would play the needy adventurer seeking a rich woman--
lay quite out of her imagination, and she had interpreted all his

behavior easily enough by her supposition that Mr. Casaubon's codicil
seemed to him, as it did to her, a gross and cruel interdict on

any active friendship between them. Their young delight in speaking
to each other, and saying what no one else would care to hear,

was forever ended, and become a treasure of the past. For this
very reason she dwelt on it without inward check. That unique

happiness too was dead, and in its shadowed silent chamber she
might vent the passionate grief which she herself wondered at.

For the first time she took down the miniature from the wall and kept
it before her, liking to blend the woman who had been too hardly

judged with the grandson whom her own heart and judgment defended.
Can any one who has rejoiced in woman's tenderness think it a reproach

to her that she took the little oval picture in her palm and made
a bed for it there, and leaned her cheek upon it, as if that would

soothe the creatures who had suffered unjust condemnation?
She did not know then that it was Love who had come to her briefly,

as in a dream before awaking, with the hues of morning on his wings--
that it was Love to whom she was sobbing her farewell as his image

was banished by the blameless rigor of irresistible day. She only
felt that there was something irrevocably amiss and lost in her lot,

and her thoughts about the future were the more readily shapen
into resolve. Ardent souls, ready to construct their coming lives,

are apt to commit themselves to the fulfilment" target="_blank" title="n.完成，成就">fulfilment of their own visions.
One day that she went to Freshitt to fulfil her promise of staying

all night and seeing baby washed, Mrs. Cadwallader came to dine,
the Rector being gone on a fishingexcursion. It was a warm evening,

and even in the delightful drawing-room, where the fine old turf sloped
from the open window towards a lilied pool and well-planted mounds,

the heat was enough to make Celia in her white muslin and light curls
reflect with pity on what Dodo must feel in her black dress and

close cap. But this was not until some episodes with baby were over,
and had left her mind at leisure. She had seated herself and taken

up a fan for some time before she said, in her quiet guttural--
"Dear Dodo, do throw off that cap. I am sure your dress must make

you feel ill."
"I am so used to the cap--it has become a sort of shell,"

said Dorothea, smiling. "I feel rather bare and exposed when it
is off."

"I must see you without it; it makes us all warm," said Celia,
throwing down her fan, and going to Dorothea. It was a pretty picture

to see this little lady in white muslin unfastening the widow's
cap from her more majestic sister, and tossing it on to a chair.

Just as the coils and braids of dark-brown hair had been set free,
Sir James entered the room. He looked at the released head, and said,

"Ah!" in a tone of satisfaction.
"It was I who did it, James," said Celia. "Dodo need not make

such a slavery of her mourning; she need not wear that cap any
more among her friends."

"My dear Celia," said Lady Chettam, "a widow must wear her
mourning at least a year."

"Not if she marries again before the end of it," said Mrs. Cadwallader,
who had some pleasure in startling her good friend the Dowager.

Sir James was annoyed, and leaned forward to play with Celia's
Maltese dog.

"That is very rare, I hope," said Lady Chettam, in a tone intended
to guard against such events. "No friend of ours ever committed

herself in that way except Mrs. Beevor, and it was very painful to
Lord Grinsell when she did so. Her first husband was objectionable,

which made it the greater wonder. And severely she was punished
for it. They said Captain Beevor dragged her about by the hair,

and held up loaded pistols at her."
"Oh, if she took the wrong man!" said Mrs. Cadwallader, who was in a

decidedly wicked mood. "Marriage is always bad then, first or second.
Priority is a poor recommendation in a husband if he has got no other.

I would rather have a good second husband than an indifferent first."
"My dear, your clever tongue runs away with you," said Lady Chettam.

"I am sure you would be the last woman to marry again prematurely,
if our dear Rector were taken away."

"Oh, I make no vows; it might be a necessary economy. It is
lawful to marry again, I suppose; else we might as well be Hindoos

instead of Christians. Of course if a woman accepts the wrong man,
she must take the consequences, and one who does it twice over

deserves her fate. But if she can marry blood, beauty, and bravery--
the sooner the better."

"I think the subject of our conversation is very ill-chosen,"
said Sir James, with a look of disgust. "Suppose we change it."

"Not on my account, Sir James," said Dorothea, determined not to lose
the opportunity of freeing herself from certain oblique references

to excellent matches. "If you are speaking on my behalf, I can
assure you that no question can be more indifferent and impersonal

to me than second marriage. It is no more to me than if you talked
of women going fox-hunting: whether it is admirable in them or not,

I shall not follow them. Pray let Mrs. Cadwallader amuse herself