And now, since her conversation with Will, many fresh images had gathered round that Aunt Julia who was Will’s grandmother; the presence of that delicate miniature, so like a living face that she knew, helping to concentrate her feelings.  What a wrong, to cut off the girl from the family protection and inheritance only because she had chosen a man who was poor!  Dorothea, early troubling her elders with questions about the facts around her, had wrought herself into some independent clearness as to the historical, political reasons why eldest sons had superior rights, and why land should be entailed:  those reasons, impressing her with a certain awe, might be weightier than she knew, but here was a question of ties which left them uninfringed.  Here was a daughter whose child—­ even according to the ordinary aping of aristocratic institutions by people who are no more aristocratic than retired grocers, and who have no more land to “keep together” than a lawn and a paddock—­ would have a prior claim.  Was inheritance a question of liking or of responsibility?  All the energy of Dorothea’s nature went on the side of responsibility—­the fulfilment of claims founded on our own deeds, such as marriage and parentage.

It was true, she said to herself, that Mr. Casaubon had a debt to the Ladislaws—­that he had to pay back what the Ladislaws had been wronged of.  And now she began to think of her husband’s will, which had been made at the time of their marriage, leaving the bulk of his property to her, with proviso in case of her having children.  That ought to be altered; and no time ought to be lost.  This very question which had just arisen about Will Ladislaw’s occupation, was the occasion for placing things on a new, right footing.  Her husband, she felt sure, according to all his previous conduct, would be ready to take the just view, if she proposed it—­she, in whose interest an unfair concentration of the property had been urged.  His sense of right had surmounted and would continue to surmount anything that might be called antipathy.  She suspected that her uncle’s scheme was disapproved by Mr. Casaubon, and this made it seem all the more opportune that a fresh understanding should be begun, so that instead of Will’s starting penniless and accepting the first function that offered itself, he should find himself in possession of a rightful income which should be paid by her husband during his life, and, by an immediate alteration of the will, should be secured at his death.  The vision of all this as what ought to be done seemed to Dorothea like a sudden letting in of daylight, waking her from her previous stupidity and incurious self-absorbed ignorance about her husband’s relation to others.  Will Ladislaw had refused Mr. Casaubon’s future aid on a ground that no longer appeared right to her; and Mr. Casaubon had never himself seen fully what was the claim upon him.  “But he will!” said Dorothea.  “The great strength of his character lies here.  And what are we doing with our money?  We make no use of half of our income.  My own money buys me nothing but an uneasy conscience.”