the Levantine coast, and fix her total darkness about the Chalybes firmly on the shores of the Euxine. A map was a fine thing to study when you were disposed to think of something else, being made up of names that would turn into a chime if you went back upon them. Dorothea set earnestly to work, bending close to her map, and uttering the names in an audible, subdued tone, which often got into a chime. She looked amusingly girlish after all her deep experience—nodding her head and marking the names off on her fingers, with a little pursing of her lip, and now and then breaking off to put her hands on each side of her face and say, “Oh dear! oh dear!”
There was no reason why this should end any more than a merry-go-round; but it was at last interrupted by the opening of the door and the announcement of Miss Noble.
The little old lady, whose bonnet hardly reached Dorothea’s shoulder, was warmly welcomed, but while her hand was being pressed she made many of her beaver-like noises, as if she had something difficult to say.
“Do sit down,” said Dorothea, rolling a chair forward. “Am I wanted for anything? I shall be so glad if I can do anything.”
“I will not stay,” said Miss Noble, putting her hand into her small basket, and holding some article inside it nervously; “I have left a friend in the churchyard.” She lapsed into her inarticulate sounds, and unconsciously drew forth the article which she was fingering. It was the tortoise-shell lozenge-box, and Dorothea felt the colour mounting to her cheeks.
“Mr Ladislaw,” continued the timid little woman. “He fears he has offended you, and has begged me to ask if you will see him for a few minutes.”
Dorothea did not answer on the instant: it was crossing her mind that she could not receive him in this library, where her husband’s prohibition seemed to dwell. She looked towards the window. Could she go out and meet him in the grounds? The sky was heavy, and the trees had begun to shiver as at a coming storm. Besides, she shrank from going out to him.
“Do see him, Mrs Casaubon,” said Miss Noble, pathetically; “else I must go back and say No, and that will hurt him.”
“Yes, I will see him,” said Dorothea. “Pray tell him to come.”
What else was there to be done? There was nothing that she longed for at that moment except to see Will: the possibility of seeing him had thrust itself insistently between her and every other object; and yet she had a throbbing excitement like an alarm upon her—a sense that she was doing something daringly defiant for his sake.
When the little lady had trotted away on her mission, Dorothea stood in the middle of the library with her hands falling clasped before her, making no attempt to compose herself in an attitude of dignified unconsciousness. What she was least conscious of just then was her own body: she was thinking of what was likely to be in Will’s mind, and of the hard feelings that others had had about him.
