Clearly, there would be no interference with Miss Brooke’s marriage through Mr. Cadwallader; and Sir James felt with some sadness that she was to have perfect liberty of misjudgment.  It was a sign of his good disposition that he did not slacken at all in his intention of carrying out Dorothea’s design of the cottages.  Doubtless this persistence was the best course for his own dignity:  but pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.  She was now enough aware of Sir James’s position with regard to her, to appreciate the rectitude of his perseverance in a landlord’s duty, to which he had at first been urged by a lover’s complaisance, and her pleasure in it was great enough to count for something even in her present happiness.  Perhaps she gave to Sir James Chettam’s cottages all the interest she could spare from Mr. Casaubon, or rather from the symphony of hopeful dreams, admiring trust, and passionate self devotion which that learned gentleman had set playing in her soul.  Hence it happened that in the good baronet’s succeeding visits, while he was beginning to pay small attentions to Celia, he found himself talking with more and more pleasure to Dorothea.  She was perfectly unconstrained and without irritation towards him now, and he was gradually discovering the delight there is in frank kindness and companionship between a man and a woman who have no passion to hide or confess.

CHAPTER IX.

1st Gent.  An ancient land in ancient oracles
Is called “law-thirsty”:  all the struggle there
Was after order and a perfect rule. 
Pray, where lie such lands now? . . .
2d Gent.  Why, where they lay of old—­in human souls.

Mr. Casaubon’s behavior about settlements was highly satisfactory to Mr. Brooke, and the preliminaries of marriage rolled smoothly along, shortening the weeks of courtship.  The betrothed bride must see her future home, and dictate any changes that she would like to have made there.  A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards.  And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it.

On a gray but dry November morning Dorothea drove to Lowick in company with her uncle and Celia.  Mr. Casaubon’s home was the manor-house.  Close by, visible from some parts of the garden, was the little church, with the old parsonage opposite.  In the beginning of his career, Mr. Casaubon had only held the living, but the death of his brother had put him in possession of the manor also.  It had a small park, with a fine old oak here and there, and an avenue of limes towards the southwest front, with a sunk fence between park and pleasure-ground, so that from the drawing-room windows the glance swept uninterruptedly along a slope of greensward till the