“Never mind, Kitty, do not grieve.  We should never admire the same people.  I often offend in something of the same way; I am apt to speak too strongly of those who don’t please me.”

In spite of this magnanimity Dorothea was still smarting:  perhaps as much from Celia’s subdued astonishment as from her small criticisms.  Of course all the world round Tipton would be out of sympathy with this marriage.  Dorothea knew of no one who thought as she did about life and its best objects.

Nevertheless before the evening was at an end she was very happy.  In an hour’s tete-a-tete with Mr. Casaubon she talked to him with more freedom than she had ever felt before, even pouring out her joy at the thought of devoting herself to him, and of learning how she might best share and further all his great ends.  Mr. Casaubon was touched with an unknown delight (what man would not have been?) at this childlike unrestrained ardor:  he was not surprised (what lover would have been?) that he should be the object of it.

“My dear young lady—­Miss Brooke—­Dorothea!” he said, pressing her hand between his hands, “this is a happiness greater than I had ever imagined to be in reserve for me.  That I should ever meet with a mind and person so rich in the mingled graces which could render marriage desirable, was far indeed from my conception.  You have all—­nay, more than all—­those qualities which I have ever regarded as the characteristic excellences of womanhood.  The great charm of your sex is its capability of an ardent self-sacrificing affection, and herein we see its fitness to round and complete the existence of our own.  Hitherto I have known few pleasures save of the severer kind:  my satisfactions have been those of the solitary student.  I have been little disposed to gather flowers that would wither in my hand, but now I shall pluck them with eagerness, to place them in your bosom.”

No speech could have been more thoroughly honest in its intention:  the frigid rhetoric at the end was as sincere as the bark of a dog, or the cawing of an amorous rook.  Would it not be rash to conclude that there was no passion behind those sonnets to Delia which strike us as the thin music of a mandolin?

Dorothea’s faith supplied all that Mr. Casaubon’s words seemed to leave unsaid:  what believer sees a disturbing omission or infelicity?  The text, whether of prophet or of poet, expands for whatever we can put into it, and even his bad grammar is sublime.

“I am very ignorant—­you will quite wonder at my ignorance,” said Dorothea.  “I have so many thoughts that may be quite mistaken; and now I shall be able to tell them all to you, and ask you about them.  But,” she added, with rapid imagination of Mr. Casaubon’s probable feeling, “I will not trouble you too much; only when you are inclined to listen to me.  You must often be weary with the pursuit of subjects in your own track.  I shall gain enough if you will take me with you there.”