And she
had not reached that point of renunciation at which she would have
been satisfied with having a wise husband: she wished, poor child,
to be wise herself. Miss Brooke was certainly very naive with all
her alleged cleverness. Celia, whose mind had never been thought
too powerful, saw the emptiness of other people's pretensions much
more readily. To have in general but little feeling, seems to be
the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion.
However, Mr. Casaubon consented to listen and teach for an hour together,
like a schoolmaster of little boys, or rather like a lover,
to whom a mistress's elementary ignorance and difficulties have
a touching fitness. Few scholars would have disliked teaching
the alphabet under such circumstances. But Dorothea herself
was a little shocked and discouraged at her own stupidity,
and the answers she got to some timid questions about the value
of the Greek accents gave her a painful suspicion that here indeed
there might be secrets not capable of explanation to a woman's reason.
Mr. Brooke had no doubt on that point, and expressed himself with
his usual strength upon it one day that he came into the library
while the reading was going forward.
"Well, but now, Casaubon, such deep studies, classics, mathematics,
that kind of thing, are too taxing for a woman--too taxing, you know.
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