Middlemarch

Mr. and Mrs. Casaubon return to Lowick Manor in the middle of January. Light snow is falling. In the blue-green boudoir, the furniture seems to have shrunk since Dorothea last saw it; the stag in the tapestry looks more like a ghost; the volumes on the shelves look like immovable imitations of books. Dorothea herself — glowing from her morning toilet, gem-like brightness in her hair and eyes — enters carrying the cameo-cases for Celia, a figure of warm life incongruous against the cold, shrunken room. Casaubon, who has risen early complaining of palpitation, is already in the library with his curate Mr. Tucker. Celia will come later. After that, there will be the round of wedding visits — received and given — keeping up the sense of busy ineffectiveness, "as of a dream which the dreamer begins to suspect." The duties of married life, contemplated as so great beforehand, seem to be shrinking with the furniture. "What shall I do?" — "Whatever you please, my dear:" that had been her brief history. Marriage was to have freed her from the gentlewoman's oppressive liberty; it had not even filled her leisure with the joy of unchecked tenderness. Her wandering gaze reaches the group of miniatures — and there she finds something that has gathered new breath and meaning. It is the miniature of Mr. Casaubon's aunt Julia, who made the unfortunate marriage — Will Ladislaw's grandmother. Dorothea fancies the face is alive: its delicate features with a headstrong look. Was it only her friends who thought her marriage unfortunate? Or did she herself find it a mistake and taste the salt bitterness of her tears in the merciful silence of the night? As Dorothea looks, the colors deepen, the lips and chin seem to grow larger, the face becomes masculine and beams on her with that full gaze which tells her on whom it falls that she is too interesting for the slightest movement of her eyelid to pass unnoticed. She sits down smiling, then says aloud: "Oh, it was cruel to speak so! How sad — how dreadful!" She hurries to find her husband; but at the head of the stairs there is Celia coming up, and below there is Mr. Brooke, exchanging welcomes with Casaubon. Brooke remarks that Casaubon is "a little pale" and suggests Casaubon overdid the studying on his honeymoon. Celia's news — disclosed gradually to Dorothea in the boudoir over the cameo-cases — is that she and Sir James Chettam are engaged. Celia colors and blushes, says it was because Dorothea went away and left nobody else for Sir James to talk to. Dorothea takes her sister's face between her hands: "It is as I used to hope and believe." Celia thinks they might marry in time; she doesn't want to be married too soon, "because it is nice to be engaged. And we shall be married all our lives after."