“You will not mind this sombre light,” said Dorothea, standing in the middle of the room.  “Since you forbade books, the library has been out of the question.  But Mr. Casaubon will soon be here again, I hope.  Is he not making progress?”

“Yes, much more rapid progress than I at first expected.  Indeed, he is already nearly in his usual state of health.”

“You do not fear that the illness will return?” said Dorothea, whose quick ear had detected some significance in Lydgate’s tone.

“Such cases are peculiarly difficult to pronounce upon,” said Lydgate.  “The only point on which I can be confident is that it will be desirable to be very watchful on Mr. Casaubon’s account, lest he should in any way strain his nervous power.”

“I beseech you to speak quite plainly,” said Dorothea, in an imploring tone.  “I cannot bear to think that there might be something which I did not know, and which, if I had known it, would have made me act differently.”  The words came out like a cry:  it was evident that they were the voice of some mental experience which lay not very far off.

“Sit down,” she added, placing herself on the nearest chair, and throwing off her bonnet and gloves, with an instinctive discarding of formality where a great question of destiny was concerned.

“What you say now justifies my own view,” said Lydgate.  “I think it is one’s function as a medical man to hinder regrets of that sort as far as possible.  But I beg you to observe that Mr. Casaubon’s case is precisely of the kind in which the issue is most difficult to pronounce upon.  He may possibly live for fifteen years or more, without much worse health than he has had hitherto.”

Dorothea had turned very pale, and when Lydgate paused she said in a low voice, “You mean if we are very careful.”

“Yes—­careful against mental agitation of all kinds, and against excessive application.”

“He would be miserable, if he had to give up his work,” said Dorothea, with a quick prevision of that wretchedness.

“I am aware of that.  The only course is to try by all means, direct and indirect, to moderate and vary his occupations.  With a happy concurrence of circumstances, there is, as I said, no immediate danger from that affection of the heart, which I believe to have been the cause of his late attack.  On the other hand, it is possible that the disease may develop itself more rapidly:  it is one of those eases in which death is sometimes sudden.  Nothing should be neglected which might be affected by such an issue.”

There was silence for a few moments, while Dorothea sat as if she had been turned to marble, though the life within her was so intense that her mind had never before swept in brief time over an equal range of scenes and motives.

“Help me, pray,” she said, at last, in the same low voice as before.  “Tell me what I can do.”

“What do you think of foreign travel?  You have been lately in Rome, I think.”