“Mrs. Casaubon informs me that a proposal has been made to you, and (according to an inference by no means stretched) has on your part been in some degree entertained, which involves your residence in this neighborhood in a capacity which I am justified in saying touches my own position in such a way as renders it not only natural and warrantable in me when that effect is viewed under the influence of legitimate feeling, but incumbent on me when the same effect is considered in the light of my responsibilities, to state at once that your acceptance of the proposal above indicated would be highly offensive to me.  That I have some claim to the exercise of a veto here, would not, I believe, be denied by any reasonable person cognizant of the relations between us:  relations which, though thrown into the past by your recent procedure, are not thereby annulled in their character of determining antecedents.  I will not here make reflections on any person’s judgment.  It is enough for me to point out to yourself that there are certain social fitnesses and proprieties which should hinder a somewhat near relative of mine from becoming any wise conspicuous in this vicinity in a status not only much beneath my own, but associated at best with the sciolism of literary or political adventurers.  At any rate, the contrary issue must exclude you from further reception at my house. 
                Yours faithfully,
                        “EDWARD CASAUBON.”

Meanwhile Dorothea’s mind was innocently at work towards the further embitterment of her husband; dwelling, with a sympathy that grew to agitation, on what Will had told her about his parents and grandparents.  Any private hours in her day were usually spent in her blue-green boudoir, and she had come to be very fond of its pallid quaintness.  Nothing had been outwardly altered there; but while the summer had gradually advanced over the western fields beyond the avenue of elms, the bare room had gathered within it those memories of an inward life which fill the air as with a cloud of good or bad angels, the invisible yet active forms of our spiritual triumphs or our spiritual falls.  She had been so used to struggle for and to find resolve in looking along the avenue towards the arch of western light that the vision itself had gained a communicating power.  Even the pale stag seemed to have reminding glances and to mean mutely, “Yes, we know.”  And the group of delicately touched miniatures had made an audience as of beings no longer disturbed about their own earthly lot, but still humanly interested.  Especially the mysterious “Aunt Julia” about whom Dorothea had never found it easy to question her husband.