could
have told him that I disapproved of that," said poor Dorothea,
inwardly, feeling a strange alternation between anger with Will and the
passionate defence of him. "They all try to blacken him before me; but
I will care for no pain, if he is not to blame. I always believed he
was good."--These were her last thoughts before she felt that the
carriage was passing under the archway of the lodge-gate at the Grange,
when she hurriedly pressed her handkerchief to her face and began to
think of her errands. The coachman begged leave to take out the horses
for half an hour as there was something wrong with a shoe; and
Dorothea, having the sense that she was going to rest, took off her
gloves and bonnet, while she was leaning against a statue in the
entrance-hall, and talking to the housekeeper. At last she said--

"I must stay here a little, Mrs. Kell. I will go into the library and
write you some memoranda from my uncle's letter, if you will open the
shutters for me."

"The shutters are open, madam," said Mrs. Kell, following Dorothea, who
had walked along as she spoke. "Mr. Ladislaw is there, looking for
something."

(Will had come to fetch a portfolio of his own sketches which he had
missed in the act of packing his movables, and did not choose to leave
behind.)

Dorothea's heart seemed to turn over as if it had had a blow, but she
was not perceptibly checked: in truth, the sense that Will was there
was for the moment all-satisfying to her, like the sight of something
precious that one has lost. When she reached the door she said to Mrs.
Kell--

"Go in first, and tell him that I am here."

Will had found his portfolio, and had laid it on the table at the far
end of the room, to turn over the sketches and please himself by
looking at the memorable piece of art which had a relation to nature
too mysterious for Dorothea. He was smiling at it still, and shaking
the sketches into order with the thought that he might find a letter
from her awaiting him at Middlemarch, when Mrs. Kell close to his elbow
said--

"Mrs. Casaubon is coming in, sir."

Will turned round quickly, and the next moment Dorothea was entering.
As Mrs. Kell closed the door behind her they met: each was looking at
the other, and consciousness was overflowed by something that
suppressed utterance. It was not confusion that kept them silent, for
they both felt that parting was near, and there is no shamefacedness in
a sad parting.

She m