"He was a squyer of lowe degre,
That loved the king's daughter of Hungrie.
--Old Romance.
Will Ladislaw's mind was now wholly bent on seeing Dorothea again, and
forthwith quitting Middlemarch. The morning after his agitating scene
with Bulstrode he wrote a brief letter to her, saying that various
causes had detained him in the neighborhood longer than he had
expected, and asking her permission to call again at Lowick at some
hour which she would mention on the earliest possible day, he being
anxious to depart, but unwilling to do so until she had granted him an
interview. He left the letter at the office, ordering the messenger to
carry it to Lowick Manor, and wait for an answer.
Ladislaw felt the awkwardness of asking for more last words. His
former farewell had been made in the hearing of Sir James Chettam, and
had been announced as final even to the butler. It is certainly trying
to a man's dignity to reappear when he is not expected to do so: a
first farewell has pathos in it, but to come back for a second lends an
opening to comedy, and it was possible even that there might be bitter
sneers afloat about Will's motives for lingering. Still it was on the
whole more satisfactory to his feeling to take the directest means of
seeing Dorothea, than to use any device which might give an air of
chance to a meeting of which he wished her to understand that it was
what he earnestly sought. When he had parted from her before, he had
been in ignorance of facts which gave a new aspect to the relation
between them, and made a more absolute severance than he had then
believed in. He knew nothing of Dorothea's private fortune, and being
little used to reflect on such matters, took it for granted that
according to Mr. Casaubon's arrangement marriage to him, Will Ladislaw,
would mean that she consented to be penniless. That was not what he
could wish for even in his secret heart, or even if she had been ready
to meet such hard contrast for his sake. And then, too, there was the
fresh smart of that disclosure about his mother's family, which if
known would be an added reason why Dorothea's friends should look down
upon him as utterly below her. The secret hope that after some years
he might come back with the sense that he had at least a personal value
equal to her wealth, seemed now the dreamy continuation of a dream.
This change would surely justify him in asking Dorothea to receive him
once more.