"I am very glad that my presence has made any difference to you,"
said Dorothea, who had a vivid memory of evenings in which she
had supposed that Mr. Casaubon's mind had gone too deep during
the day to be able to get to the surface again. I fear there
was a little temper in her reply. "I hope when we get to Lowick,
I shall be more useful to you, and be able to enter a little more
into what interests you."

"Doubtless, my dear," said Mr. Casaubon, with a slight bow.
"The notes I have here made will want sifting, and you can,
if you please, extract them under my direction."

"And all your notes," said Dorothea, whose heart had already
burned within her on this subject, so that now she could not help
speaking with her tongue. "All those rows of volumes--will you not
now do what you used to speak of?--will you not make up your mind
what part of them you will use, and begin to write the book which
will make your vast knowledge useful to the world? I will write
to your dictation, or I will copy and extract what you tell me:
I can be of no other use." Dorothea, in a most unaccountable,
darkly feminine manner, ended with a slight sob and eyes full
of tears.

The excessive feeling manifested would alone have been highly disturbing
to Mr. Casaubon, but there were other reasons why Dorothea's words
were among the most cutting and irritating to him that she could
have been impelled to use. She was as blind to his inward troubles
as he to hers: she had not yet learned those hidden conflicts in her
husband which claim our pity. She had not yet listened patiently