Middlemarch

It is a May morning, cold, with blossoms blown from the gardens onto the green mounds of Lowick churchyard. Old Featherstone had left written directions for everything — he meant to have a funeral "beyond his betters" — and had been "bent on having persons 'bid' to it who would rather have stayed at home," including female relatives whom he had disliked visiting him in life. He had also arranged who should conduct the service: not Mr. Casaubon, whom he despised as his own rector and as a preacher he had been obliged to sit under, but Mr. Cadwallader — who had needed to ask Featherstone a favor about the trout-stream, and who was besides a man of high gentry living four miles away, exalted to "an equal sky with the sheriff of the county." Mrs. Cadwallader had used this distinction as a reason to persuade Sir James and young Lady Chettam to drive her to Lowick: she liked, she said, to see collections of strange animals. They join Dorothea at an upper window of the manor. Casaubon — who has resumed nearly his habitual working life despite warnings — welcomes them politely and slips back to the library. Mrs. Cadwallader offers a running commentary on the procession: the Vincys look "fair and sleek" while the dark purple-faced blood-relations make an excellent foil; Mr. Cadwallader in his white surplice is "like an ugly archangel towering above them." Dorothea watches with the interest of a monk on his holiday, wishing she knew more of her neighbors. "How piteous," she says when the procession enters the church. "This funeral seems to me the most dismal thing I ever saw. It is a blot on the morning. I cannot bear to think that any one should die and leave no love behind." Mr. Brooke arrives, having come ostensibly to check on Casaubon. As the procession re-emerges, Mrs. Cadwallader spies a new face in the crowd — "a little round head with bulging eyes—a sort of frog-face." Celia, looking over her shoulder, makes a sudden discovery: "Why, Dodo, you never told me that Mr. Ladislaw was come again!" Dorothea turns pale; everyone notices; Casaubon looks at her. Mr. Brooke explains cheerfully: Will came with him and is his guest at the Grange. He has brought Naumann's picture — there is Casaubon to the very life as Aquinas — and will make an excellent secretary; Brooke invited him when Casaubon was ill and Dorothea said he couldn't have visitors. Casaubon, who had assumed Dorothea had sent Will away and had proudly never referred to the matter since, now silently infers that she had asked her uncle to invite him instead. He masters his irritation and replies with dignified chill: "You are exceedingly hospitable, my dear sir; and I owe you acknowledgments for exercising your hospitality towards a relative of mine." Dorothea cannot, at that moment, enter into any explanation. Celia says Will looks quite like the miniature of Mr. Casaubon's aunt that hangs in Dorothea's boudoir. Brooke goes off to fetch him.