"I have accepted Mr. Casaubon's offer. My uncle brought me the letter
that contained it; he knew about it beforehand."
"I beg your pardon, if I have said anything to hurt you, Dodo," said
Celia, with a slight sob. She never could have thought that she should
feel as she did. There was something funereal in the whole affair, and
Mr. Casaubon seemed to be the officiating clergyman, about whom it
would be indecent to make remarks.
"Never mind, Kitty, do not grieve. We should never admire the same
people. I often offend in something of the same way; I am apt to speak
too strongly of those who don't please me."
In spite of this magnanimity Dorothea was still smarting: perhaps as
much from Celia's subdued astonishment as from her small criticisms.
Of course all the world round Tipton would be out of sympathy with this
marriage. Dorothea knew of no one who thought as she did about life
and its best objects.
Nevertheless before the evening was at an end she was very happy. In
an hour's tete-a-tete with Mr. Casaubon she talked to him with more
freedom than she had ever felt before, even pouring out her joy at the
thought of devoting herself to him, and of learning how she might best
share and further all his great ends. Mr. Casaubon was touched with an
unknown delight (what man would not have been?) at this childlike
unrestrained ardor: he was not surprised (what lover would have been?)
that he should be the object of it.
"My dear young lady--Miss Brooke--Dorothea!" he said, pressing her hand
between his hands, "this is a happiness greater than I had ever
imagined to be in reserve for me. That I should ever meet with a mind
and person so rich in the mingled graces which could render marriage
desirable, was far indeed from my conception. You have all--nay, more
than all--those qualities which I have ever regarded as the
characteristic excellences of womanhood. The great charm of your sex
is its capability of an ardent self-sacrificing affection, and herein
we see its fitness to round and complete the existence of our own.
Hitherto I have known few pleasures save of the severer kind: my
satisfactions have been those of the solitary student. I have been
little disposed to gather flowers that would wither in my hand, but now
I shall pluck them with eagerness, to place them in your bosom."
No speech could have been more thoroughly honest in its intention: the
frigid rhetoric at the end was as sincere as the bark of a dog, or the
cawing of an amorous rook. Would it not be rash to conclude that there
was no passion behind those sonnets to Delia which strike us as the
thin music of a mandolin?