No more was said; Dorothea was too much jarred to recover her temper and behave so as to show that she admitted any error in herself.  She was disposed rather to accuse the intolerable narrowness and the purblind conscience of the society around her:  and Celia was no longer the eternal cherub, but a thorn in her spirit, a pink-and-white nullifidian, worse than any discouraging presence in the “Pilgrim’s Progress.”  The fad of drawing plans!  What was life worth—­what great faith was possible when the whole effect of one’s actions could be withered up into such parched rubbish as that?  When she got out of the carriage, her cheeks were pale and her eyelids red.  She was an image of sorrow, and her uncle who met her in the hall would have been alarmed, if Celia had not been close to her looking so pretty and composed, that he at once concluded Dorothea’s tears to have their origin in her excessive religiousness.  He had returned, during their absence, from a journey to the county town, about a petition for the pardon of some criminal.

“Well, my dears,” he said, kindly, as they went up to kiss him, “I hope nothing disagreeable has happened while I have been away.”

“No, uncle,” said Celia, “we have been to Freshitt to look at the cottages.  We thought you would have been at home to lunch.”

“I came by Lowick to lunch—­you didn’t know I came by Lowick.  And I have brought a couple of pamphlets for you, Dorothea—­in the library, you know; they lie on the table in the library.”

It seemed as if an electric stream went through Dorothea, thrilling her from despair into expectation.  They were pamphlets about the early Church.  The oppression of Celia, Tantripp, and Sir James was shaken off, and she walked straight to the library.  Celia went up-stairs.  Mr. Brooke was detained by a message, but when he re-entered the library, he found Dorothea seated and already deep in one of the pamphlets which had some marginal manuscript of Mr. Casaubon’s,—­taking it in as eagerly as she might have taken in the scent of a fresh bouquet after a dry, hot, dreary walk.

She was getting away from Tipton and Freshitt, and her own sad liability to tread in the wrong places on her way to the New Jerusalem.

Mr. Brooke sat down in his arm-chair, stretched his legs towards the wood-fire, which had fallen into a wondrous mass of glowing dice between the dogs, and rubbed his hands gently, looking very mildly towards Dorothea, but with a neutral leisurely air, as if he had nothing particular to say.  Dorothea closed her pamphlet, as soon as she was aware of her uncle’s presence, and rose as if to go.  Usually she would have been interested about her uncle’s merciful errand on behalf of the criminal, but her late agitation had made her absent-minded.

“I came back by Lowick, you know,” said Mr. Brooke, not as if with any intention to arrest her departure, but apparently from his usual tendency to say what he had said before.  This fundamental principle of human speech was markedly exhibited in Mr. Brooke.  “I lunched there and saw Casaubon’s library, and that kind of thing.  There’s a sharp air, driving.  Won’t you sit down, my dear?  You look cold.”