
with mingled pleasure she looked very little like a devotee. Riding was an
indulgence which she allowed herself in spite of conscientious qualms; she felt
that she enjoyed it in a pagan sensuous way, and always looked forward to
renouncing it.
    She was open, ardent, and not in the least self-admiring; indeed, it was
pretty to see how her imagination adorned her sister Celia with attractions
altogether superior to her own, and if any gentleman appeared to come to the
Grange from some other motive than that of seeing Mr. Brooke, she concluded that
he must be in love with Celia: Sir James Chettam, for example, whom she
constantly considered from Celia's point of view, inwardly debating whether it
would be good for Celia to accept him. That he should be regarded as a suitor to
herself would have seemed to her a ridiculous irrelevance. Dorothea, with all
her eagerness to know the truths of life, retained very childlike ideas about
marriage. She felt sure that she would have accepted the judicious Hooker, if
she had been born in time to save him from that wretched mistake he made in
matrimony; or John Milton when his blindness had come on; or any of the other
great men whose odd habits it would have been glorious piety to endure; but an
amiable handsome baronet, who said »Exactly« to her remarks even when she
expressed uncertainty, - how could he affect her as a lover? The really
delightful marriage must be that where your husband was a sort of father, and
could teach you even Hebrew, if you wished it.
    These peculiarities of Dorothea's character caused Mr. Brooke to be all the
more blamed in neighbouring families for not securing some middle-aged lady as
guide and companion to his nieces. But he himself dreaded so much the sort of
superior woman likely to be available for such a position, that he allowed
himself to be dissuaded by Dorothea's objections, and was in this case brave
enough to defy the world - that is to say, Mrs. Cadwallader the Rector's wife,
and the small group of gentry with whom he visited in the north-east corner of
Loamshire. So Miss Brooke presided in her uncle's household, and did not at all
dislike her new authority, with the homage that belonged to it.
    Sir James Chettam was going to dine at the Grange to-day with another
gentleman whom the girls had never seen, and about whom Dorothea felt some
venerating expectation. This was the Reverend Edward Casaubon, noted in the
county as a man of profound learning, understood for many
