“He exhausted himself last night,” Dorothea said to herself, thinking at first that he was asleep, and that the summer-house was too damp a place to rest in.  But then she remembered that of late she had seen him take that attitude when she was reading to him, as if he found it easier than any other; and that he would sometimes speak, as well as listen, with his face down in that way.  She went into the summerhouse and said, “I am come, Edward; I am ready.”

He took no notice, and she thought that he must be fast asleep.  She laid her hand on his shoulder, and repeated, “I am ready!” Still he was motionless; and with a sudden confused fear, she leaned down to him, took off his velvet cap, and leaned her cheek close to his head, crying in a distressed tone—­

“Wake, dear, wake!  Listen to me.  I am come to answer.”  But Dorothea never gave her answer.

Later in the day, Lydgate was seated by her bedside, and she was talking deliriously, thinking aloud, and recalling what had gone through her mind the night before.  She knew him, and called him by his name, but appeared to think it right that she should explain everything to him; and again, and again, begged him to explain everything to her husband.

“Tell him I shall go to him soon:  I am ready to promise.  Only, thinking about it was so dreadful—­it has made me ill.  Not very ill.  I shall soon be better.  Go and tell him.”

But the silence in her husband’s ear was never more to be broken.

CHAPTER XLIX.

    A task too strong for wizard spells
    This squire had brought about;
    ’T is easy dropping stones in wells,
    But who shall get them out?”

“I wish to God we could hinder Dorothea from knowing this,” said Sir James Chettam, with a little frown on his brow, and an expression of intense disgust about his mouth.

He was standing on the hearth-rug in the library at Lowick Grange, and speaking to Mr. Brooke.  It was the day after Mr. Casaubon had been buried, and Dorothea was not yet able to leave her room.

“That would be difficult, you know, Chettam, as she is an executrix, and she likes to go into these things—­property, land, that kind of thing.  She has her notions, you know,” said Mr. Brooke, sticking his eye-glasses on nervously, and exploring the edges of a folded paper which he held in his hand; “and she would like to act—­ depend upon it, as an executrix Dorothea would want to act.  And she was twenty-one last December, you know.  I can hinder nothing.”

Sir James looked at the carpet for a minute in silence, and then lifting his eyes suddenly fixed them on Mr. Brooke, saying, “I will tell you what we can do.  Until Dorothea is well, all business must be kept from her, and as soon as she is able to be moved she must come to us.  Being with Celia and the baby will be the best thing in the world for her, and will pass away the time.  And meanwhile you must get rid of Ladislaw:  you must send him out of the country.”  Here Sir James’s look of disgust returned in all its intensity.