And now, since her conversation with Will, many fresh images had
gathered round that Aunt Julia who was Will's grandmother; the presence
of that delicate miniature, so like a living face that she knew,
helping to concentrate her feelings. What a wrong, to cut off the girl
from the family protection and inheritance only because she had chosen
a man who was poor! Dorothea, early troubling her elders with
questions about the facts around her, had wrought herself into some
independent clearness as to the historical, political reasons why
eldest sons had superior rights, and why land should be entailed: those
reasons, impressing her with a certain awe, might be weightier than she
knew, but here was a question of ties which left them uninfringed.
Here was a daughter whose child--even according to the ordinary aping
of aristocratic institutions by people who are no more aristocratic
than retired grocers, and who have no more land to "keep together" than
a lawn and a paddock--would have a prior claim. Was inheritance a
question of liking or of responsibility? All the energy of Dorothea's
nature went on the side of responsibility--the fulfilment of claims
founded on our own deeds, such as marriage and parentage.
It was true, she said to herself, that Mr. Casaubon had a debt to the
Ladislaws--that he had to pay back what the Ladislaws had been wronged
of. And now she began to think of her husband's will, which had been
made at the time of their marriage, leaving the bulk of his property to
her, with proviso in case of her having children. That ought to be
altered; and no time ought to be lost. This very question which had
just arisen about Will Ladislaw's occupation, was the occasion for
placing things on a new, right footing. Her husband, she felt sure,
according to all his previous conduct, would be ready to take the just
view, if she proposed it--she, in whose interest an unfair
concentration of the property had been urged. His sense of right had
surmounted and would continue to surmount anything that might be called
antipathy. She suspected that her uncle's scheme was disapproved by
Mr. Casaubon, and this made it seem all the more opportune that a fresh
understanding should be begun, so that instead of Will's starting
penniless and accepting the first function that offered itself, he
should find himself in possession of a rightful income which should be
paid by her husband during his life, and, by an immediate alteration of
the will, should be secured at his death. The vision of all this as
what ought to be done seemed to Dorothea like a sudden letting in of
daylight, waking her from her previous stupidity and incurious
self-absorbed ignorance about her husband's relation to others. Will
Ladislaw had refused Mr. Casaubon's future aid on a ground that no
longer appeared right to her; and Mr. Casaubon had never himself seen
fully what was the claim upon him. "But he will!" said Dorothea. "The
great strength of his character lies here. And what are we doing with
our money? We make no use of half of our income. My own money buys me
nothing but an uneasy conscience."