“Now, my dear Dorothea, I wish you to favor me by pointing out which room you would like to have as your boudoir,” said Mr. Casaubon, showing that his views of the womanly nature were sufficiently large to include that requirement.

“It is very kind of you to think of that,” said Dorothea, “but I assure you I would rather have all those matters decided for me.  I shall be much happier to take everything as it is—­just as you have been used to have it, or as you will yourself choose it to be.  I have no motive for wishing anything else.”

“Oh, Dodo,” said Celia, “will you not have the bow-windowed room up-stairs?”

Mr. Casaubon led the way thither.  The bow-window looked down the avenue of limes; the furniture was all of a faded blue, and there were miniatures of ladies and gentlemen with powdered hair hanging in a group.  A piece of tapestry over a door also showed a blue-green world with a pale stag in it.  The chairs and tables were thin-legged and easy to upset.  It was a room where one might fancy the ghost of a tight-laced lady revisiting the scene of her embroidery.  A light bookcase contained duodecimo volumes of polite literature in calf, completing the furniture.

“Yes,” said Mr. Brooke, “this would be a pretty room with some new hangings, sofas, and that sort of thing.  A little bare now.”

“No, uncle,” said Dorothea, eagerly.  “Pray do not speak of altering anything.  There are so many other things in the world that want altering—­I like to take these things as they are.  And you like them as they are, don’t you?” she added, looking at Mr. Casaubon.  “Perhaps this was your mother’s room when she was young.”

“It was,” he said, with his slow bend of the head.

“This is your mother,” said Dorothea, who had turned to examine the group of miniatures.  “It is like the tiny one you brought me; only, I should think, a better portrait.  And this one opposite, who is this?”

“Her elder sister.  They were, like you and your sister, the only two children of their parents, who hang above them, you see.”

“The sister is pretty,” said Celia, implying that she thought less favorably of Mr. Casaubon’s mother.  It was a new opening to Celia’s imagination, that he came of a family who had all been young in their time—­the ladies wearing necklaces.

“It is a peculiar face,” said Dorothea, looking closely.  “Those deep gray eyes rather near together—­and the delicate irregular nose with a sort of ripple in it—­and all the powdered curls hanging backward.  Altogether it seems to me peculiar rather than pretty.  There is not even a family likeness between her and your mother.”

“No.  And they were not alike in their lot.”

“You did not mention her to me,” said Dorothea.

“My aunt made an unfortunate marriage.  I never saw her.”

Dorothea wondered a little, but felt that it would be indelicate just then to ask for any information which Mr. Casaubon did not proffer, and she turned to the window to admire the view.  The sun had lately pierced the gray, and the avenue of limes cast shadows.