asked Mr. Casaubon at once to teach her the languages, dreading of all
things to be tiresome instead of helpful; but it was not entirely out
of devotion to her future husband that she wished to know Latin and
Creek. Those provinces of masculine knowledge seemed to her a
standing-ground from which all truth could be seen more truly. As it
was, she constantly doubted her own conclusions, because she felt her
own ignorance: how could she be confident that one-roomed cottages were
not for the glory of God, when men who knew the classics appeared to
conciliate indifference to the cottages with zeal for the glory?
Perhaps even Hebrew might be necessary--at least the alphabet and a few
roots--in order to arrive at the core of things, and judge soundly on
the social duties of the Christian. And she had not reached that point
of renunciation at which she would have been satisfied with having a
wise husband: she wished, poor child, to be wise herself. Miss Brooke
was certainly very naive with all her alleged cleverness. Celia, whose
mind had never been thought too powerful, saw the emptiness of other
people's pretensions much more readily. To have in general but little
feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any
particular occasion.

However, Mr. Casaubon consented to listen and teach for an hour
together, like a schoolmaster of little boys, or rather like a lover,
to whom a mistress's elementary ignorance and difficulties have a
touching fitness. Few scholars would have disliked teaching the
alphabet under such circumstances. But Dorothea herself was a little
shocked and discouraged at her own stupidity, and the answers she got
to some timid questions about the value of the Greek accents gave her a
painful suspicion that here indeed there might be secrets not capable
of explanation to a woman's reason.

Mr. Brooke had no doubt on that point, and expressed himself with his
usual strength upon it one day that he came into the library while the
reading was going forward.

"Well, but now, Casaubon, such deep studies, classics, mathematics,
that kind of thing, are too taxing for a woman--too taxing, you know."

"Dorothea is learning to read the characters simply," said Mr.
Casaubon, evading the question. "She had the very considerate thought
of saving my eyes."

"Ah, well, without understanding, you know--that may not be so bad.
But there is a lightness about the feminine mind--a touch and
go