After dinner, at the hour when she usually began to read aloud, Mr. Casaubon proposed that they should go into the library, where, he said, he had ordered a fire and lights. He seemed to have revived, and to be thinking intently.
In the library Dorothea observed that he had newly arranged a row of his notebooks on a table, and now he took up and put into her hand a well-known volume, which was a table of contents to all the others.
“You will oblige me, my dear,” he said, seating himself, “if instead of other reading this evening, you will go through this aloud, pencil in hand, and at each point where I say ‘mark,’ will make a cross with your pencil. This is the first step in a sifting process which I have long had in view, and as we go on I shall be able to indicate to you certain principles of selection whereby you will, I trust, have an intelligent participation in my purpose.”
This proposal was only one more sign added to many since his memorable interview with Lydgate, that Mr. Casaubon’s original reluctance to let Dorothea work with him had given place to the contrary disposition, namely, to demand much interest and labor from her.
After she had read and marked for two hours, he said, “We will take the volume upstairs—and the pencil, if you please—and in case of reading in the night, we can pursue this task. It is not wearisome to you, I trust, Dorothea?”
“I prefer always reading what you like best to hear,” said Dorothea, who told the simple truth; for what she dreaded was to exert herself in reading or anything else which left him as joyless as ever.
It was a proof of the force with which certain characteristics in Dorothea impressed those around her, that her husband, with all his jealousy and suspicion, had gathered implicit trust in the integrity of her promises,