“There is nothing that I like in him,” said Dorothea, rather impetuously.

Mr. Brooke threw his head and shoulders backward as if some one had thrown a light missile at him.  Dorothea immediately felt some self-rebuke, and said—­

“I mean in the light of a husband.  He is very kind, I think—­really very good about the cottages.  A well-meaning man.”

“But you must have a scholar, and that sort of thing?  Well, it lies a little in our family.  I had it myself—­that love of knowledge, and going into everything—­a little too much—­it took me too far; though that sort of thing doesn’t often run in the female-line; or it runs underground like the rivers in Greece, you know—­it comes out in the sons.  Clever sons, clever mothers.  I went a good deal into that, at one time.  However, my dear, I have always said that people should do as they like in these things, up to a certain point.  I couldn’t, as your guardian, have consented to a bad match.  But Casaubon stands well:  his position is good.  I am afraid Chettam will be hurt, though, and Mrs. Cadwallader will blame me.”

That evening, of course, Celia knew nothing of what had happened.  She attributed Dorothea’s abstracted manner, and the evidence of further crying since they had got home, to the temper she had been in about Sir James Chettam and the buildings, and was careful not to give further offence:  having once said what she wanted to say, Celia had no disposition to recur to disagreeable subjects.  It had been her nature when a child never to quarrel with any one—­ only to observe with wonder that they quarrelled with her, and looked like turkey-cocks; whereupon she was ready to play at cat’s cradle with them whenever they recovered themselves.  And as to Dorothea, it had always been her way to find something wrong in her sister’s words, though Celia inwardly protested that she always said just how things were, and nothing else:  she never did and never could put words together out of her own head.  But the best of Dodo was, that she did not keep angry for long together.  Now, though they had hardly spoken to each other all the evening, yet when Celia put by her work, intending to go to bed, a proceeding in which she was always much the earlier, Dorothea, who was seated on a low stool, unable to occupy herself except in meditation, said, with the musical intonation which in moments of deep but quiet feeling made her speech like a fine bit of recitative—­

“Celia, dear, come and kiss me,” holding her arms open as she spoke.

Celia knelt down to get the right level and gave her little butterfly kiss, while Dorothea encircled her with gentle arms and pressed her lips gravely on each cheek in turn.

“Don’t sit up, Dodo, you are so pale to-night:  go to bed soon,” said Celia, in a comfortable way, without any touch of pathos.

“No, dear, I am very, very happy,” said Dorothea, fervently.