Certainly these men who had so few spontaneous ideas might be very useful members of society under good feminine direction, if they were fortunate in choosing their sisters-in-law!  It is difficult to say whether there was or was not a little wilfulness in her continuing blind to the possibility that another sort of choice was in question in relation to her.  But her life was just now full of hope and action:  she was not only thinking of her plans, but getting down learned books from the library and reading many things hastily (that she might be a little less ignorant in talking to Mr. Casaubon), all the while being visited with conscientious questionings whether she were not exalting these poor doings above measure and contemplating them with that self-satisfaction which was the last doom of ignorance and folly.

CHAPTER IV.

1st Gent.  Our deeds are fetters that we forge ourselves.
2d Gent.  Ay, truly:  but I think it is the world
That brings the iron.

“Sir James seems determined to do everything you wish,” said Celia, as they were driving home from an inspection of the new building-site.

“He is a good creature, and more sensible than any one would imagine,” said Dorothea, inconsiderately.

“You mean that he appears silly.”

“No, no,” said Dorothea, recollecting herself, and laying her hand on her sister’s a moment, “but he does not talk equally well on all subjects.”

“I should think none but disagreeable people do,” said Celia, in her usual purring way.  “They must be very dreadful to live with.  Only think! at breakfast, and always.”

Dorothea laughed.  “O Kitty, you are a wonderful creature!” She pinched Celia’s chin, being in the mood now to think her very winning and lovely—­fit hereafter to be an eternal cherub, and if it were not doctrinally wrong to say so, hardly more in need of salvation than a squirrel.  “Of course people need not be always talking well.  Only one tells the quality of their minds when they try to talk well.”

“You mean that Sir James tries and fails.”

“I was speaking generally.  Why do you catechise me about Sir James?  It is not the object of his life to please me.”

“Now, Dodo, can you really believe that?”

“Certainly.  He thinks of me as a future sister—­that is all.”  Dorothea had never hinted this before, waiting, from a certain shyness on such subjects which was mutual between the sisters, until it should be introduced by some decisive event.  Celia blushed, but said at once—­

“Pray do not make that mistake any longer, Dodo.  When Tantripp was brushing my hair the other day, she said that Sir James’s man knew from Mrs. Cadwallader’s maid that Sir James was to marry the eldest Miss Brooke.”

“How can you let Tantripp talk such gossip to you, Celia?” said Dorothea, indignantly, not the less angry because details asleep in her memory were now awakened to confirm the unwelcome revelation.  “You must have asked her questions.  It is degrading.”