“Are you ill, Edward?” she said, rising immediately.

“I felt some uneasiness in a reclining posture.  I will sit here for a time.”  She threw wood on the fire, wrapped herself up, and said, “You would like me to read to you?”

“You would oblige me greatly by doing so, Dorothea,” said Mr. Casaubon, with a shade more meekness than usual in his polite manner.  “I am wakeful:  my mind is remarkably lucid.”

“I fear that the excitement may be too great for you,” said Dorothea, remembering Lydgate’s cautions.

“No, I am not conscious of undue excitement.  Thought is easy.”  Dorothea dared not insist, and she read for an hour or more on the same plan as she had done in the evening, but getting over the pages with more quickness.  Mr. Casaubon’s mind was more alert, and he seemed to anticipate what was coming after a very slight verbal indication, saying, “That will do—­mark that”—­or “Pass on to the next head—­I omit the second excursus on Crete.”  Dorothea was amazed to think of the bird-like speed with which his mind was surveying the ground where it had been creeping for years.  At last he said—­

“Close the book now, my dear.  We will resume our work to-morrow.  I have deferred it too long, and would gladly see it completed.  But you observe that the principle on which my selection is made, is to give adequate, and not disproportionate illustration to each of the theses enumerated in my introduction, as at present sketched.  You have perceived that distinctly, Dorothea?”

“Yes,” said Dorothea, rather tremulously.  She felt sick at heart.

“And now I think that I can take some repose,” said Mr. Casaubon.  He laid down again and begged her to put out the lights.  When she had lain down too, and there was a darkness only broken by a dull glow on the hearth, he said—­

“Before I sleep, I have a request to make, Dorothea.”

“What is it?” said Dorothea, with dread in her mind.

“It is that you will let me know, deliberately, whether, in case of my death, you will carry out my wishes:  whether you will avoid doing what I should deprecate, and apply yourself to do what I should desire.”

Dorothea was not taken by surprise:  many incidents had been leading her to the conjecture of some intention on her husband’s part which might make a new yoke for her.  She did not answer immediately.

“You refuse?” said Mr. Casaubon, with more edge in his tone.

“No, I do not yet refuse,” said Dorothea, in a clear voice, the need of freedom asserting itself within her; “but it is too solemn—­ I think it is not right—­to make a promise when I am ignorant what it will bind me to.  Whatever affection prompted I would do without promising.”

“But you would use your own judgment:  I ask you to obey mine; you refuse.”

“No, dear, no!” said Dorothea, beseechingly, crushed by opposing fears.  “But may I wait and reflect a little while?  I desire with my whole soul to do what will comfort you; but I cannot give any pledge suddenly—­ still less a pledge to do I know not what.”