to words depends on our feeling, and his tone of angry regret had so much
kindness in it for Dorothea's heart, which had always been giving out
ardor and had never been fed with much from the living beings around her,
that she felt a new sense of gratitude and answered with a gentle smile--

"It is very good of you to be anxious about me. It is because you
did not like Lowick yourself: you had set your heart on another
kind of life. But Lowick is my chosen home."

The last sentence was spoken with an almost solemn cadence, and Will
did not know what to say, since it would not be useful for him
to embrace her slippers, and tell her that he would die for her:
it was clear that she required nothing of the sort; and they were
both silent for a moment or two, when Dorothea began again with an
air of saying at last what had been in her mind beforehand.

"I wanted to ask you again about something you said the other day.
Perhaps it was half of it your lively way of speaking: I notice
that you like to put things strongly; I myself often exaggerate
when I speak hastily."

"What was it?" said Will, observing that she spoke with a timidity
quite new in her. "I have a hyperbolical tongue: it catches fire
as it goes. I dare say I shall have to retract."

"I mean what you said about the necessity of knowing German--I mean,
for the subjects that Mr. Casaubon is engaged in. I have been thinking
about it; and it seems to me that with Mr. Casaubon's learning he must
have before him the same materials as German scholars--has he not?"
Dorothea's timidity was due to an indistinct consciousness that she