Middlemarch

Driving home from Freshitt after inspecting Sir James's building site, Celia delivers what she has been holding back: Tantripp told her — via the network of household gossip — that Sir James's man had heard from Mrs. Cadwallader's maid that Sir James intends to marry the eldest Miss Brooke. Their uncle expects it. Everyone expects it. Dorothea bursts into tears — not from grief about Sir James, but from pain and vexation at having been so completely misread. "I have never agreed with him about anything but the cottages," she says. "I was barely polite to him before." The exchange ends badly: Celia calls cottage-planning Dorothea's "fad," and Dorothea, furious, refuses to soften. She arrives home with pale cheeks and red eyelids. Mr. Brooke has come back from Lowick, where he stopped for lunch. He was there to see Casaubon's library. He has brought Dorothea some pamphlets on the early Church — with marginal notes in Casaubon's hand. She sits down with them immediately and is absorbed. Then, in the firelight, Mr. Brooke explains: Casaubon has deferred to him as guardian, has asked permission to make Dorothea an offer of marriage. Dorothea answers at once, clearly and without hesitation: "If he makes me an offer, I shall accept him. I admire and honor him more than any man I ever saw." Mr. Brooke gently raises the objections — Casaubon is over five-and-forty, a good seven-and-twenty years older than Dorothea; his health is not strong. Dorothea meets each point with equanimity: she has never wanted a husband near her own age; she wants someone above her in judgment and knowledge; she will be all the happier the more room there is to help him. Mr. Brooke, accepting that his niece is beyond persuasion, draws a letter from his pocket. She rises to go and read it.