ent up to her room to answer Mr.
Casaubon's letter. Why should she defer the answer? She wrote it over
three times, not because she wished to change the wording, but because
her hand was unusually uncertain, and she could not bear that Mr.
Casaubon should think her handwriting bad and illegible. She piqued
herself on writing a hand in which each letter was distinguishable
without any large range of conjecture, and she meant to make much use
of this accomplishment, to save Mr. Casaubon's eyes. Three times she
wrote.

MY DEAR MR. CASAUBON,--I am very grateful to you for loving me, and
thinking me worthy to be your wife. I can look forward to no better
happiness than that which would be one with yours. If I said more, it
would only be the same thing written out at greater length, for I
cannot now dwell on any other thought than that I may be through life

Yours devotedly,
DOROTHEA BROOKE.

Later in the evening she followed her uncle into the library to give
him the letter, that he might send it in the morning. He was
surprised, but his surprise only issued in a few moments' silence,
during which he pushed about various objects on his writing-table, and
finally stood with his back to the fire, his glasses on his nose,
looking at the address of Dorothea's letter.

"Have you thought enough about this, my dear?" he said at last.

"There was no need to think long, uncle. I know of nothing to make me
vacillate. If I changed my mind, it must be because of something
important and entirely new to me."

"Ah!--then you have accepted him? Then Chettam has no chance? Has
Chettam offended you--offended you, you know? What is it you don't
like in Chettam?"

"There is nothing that I like in him," said Dorothea, rather
impetuously.

Mr. Brooke threw his head and shoulders backward as if some one had
thrown a light missile at him. Dorothea immediately felt some
self-rebuke, and said--

"I mean in the light of a husband. He is very kind, I think--really
very good about the cottages. A well-meaning man."

"But you must have a scholar, and that sort of thing? Well, it lies a
little in our family. I had it myself--that love of knowledge, and
going into everything--a little too much--it took me too far; though
that sort of thing doesn't often run in the female-line; or it runs
underground like the rivers in Greece, you know--it comes out in the
sons. Clever sons, clever mo