“I shall not dine, then, Tantripp.”

“Oh, madam, let me bring you a little something?”

“No; I am not well.  Get everything ready in my dressing room, but pray do not disturb me again.”

Dorothea sat almost motionless in her meditative struggle, while the evening slowly deepened into night.  But the struggle changed continually, as that of a man who begins with a movement towards striking and ends with conquering his desire to strike.  The energy that would animate a crime is not more than is wanted to inspire a resolved submission, when the noble habit of the soul reasserts itself.  That thought with which Dorothea had gone out to meet her husband—­her conviction that he had been asking about the possible arrest of all his work, and that the answer must have wrung his heart, could not be long without rising beside the image of him, like a shadowy monitor looking at her anger with sad remonstrance.  It cost her a litany of pictured sorrows and of silent cries that she might be the mercy for those sorrows—­ but the resolved submission did come; and when the house was still, and she knew that it was near the time when Mr. Casaubon habitually went to rest, she opened her door gently and stood outside in the darkness waiting for his coming up-stairs with a light in his hand.  If he did not come soon she thought that she would go down and even risk incurring another pang.  She would never again expect anything else.  But she did hear the library door open, and slowly the light advanced up the staircase without noise from the footsteps on the carpet.  When her husband stood opposite to her, she saw that his face was more haggard.  He started slightly on seeing her, and she looked up at him beseechingly, without speaking.

“Dorothea!” he said, with a gentle surprise in his tone.  “Were you waiting for me?”

“Yes, I did not like to disturb you.”

“Come, my dear, come.  You are young, and need not to extend your life by watching.”

When the kind quiet melancholy of that speech fell on Dorothea’s ears, she felt something like the thankfulness that might well up in us if we had narrowly escaped hurting a lamed creature.  She put her hand into her husband’s, and they went along the broad corridor together.

BOOK V.

THE DEAD HAND.

CHAPTER XLIII.

    This figure hath high price:  ’t was wrought with love
    Ages ago in finest ivory;
    Nought modish in it, pure and noble lines
    Of generous womanhood that fits all time
    That too is costly ware; majolica
    Of deft design, to please a lordly eye: 
    The smile, you see, is perfect—­wonderful
    As mere Faience! a table ornament
    To suit the richest mounting.”