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Dorothea’s inferences may seem large ; but really life could never have gone on at any period but for this liberal allowance of conclusions , which has facilitated marriage under the difficulties of civilization . Has any one ever pinched into its pilulous smallness the cobweb of pre - matrimonial acquaintanceship ? “ Certainly , ” said good Sir James . “ Miss Brooke shall not be urged to tell reasons she would rather be silent upon . I am sure her reasons would do her honor . ” He was not in the least jealous of the interest with which Dorothea had looked up at Mr . Casaubon : it never occurred to him that a girl to whom he was meditating an offer of marriage could care for a dried bookworm towards fifty , except , indeed , in a religious sort of way , as for a clergyman of some distinction . However , since Miss Brooke had become engaged in a conversation with Mr . Casaubon about the Vaudois clergy , Sir James betook himself to Celia , and talked to her about her sister ; spoke of a house in town , and asked whether Miss Brooke disliked London . Away from her sister , Celia talked quite easily , and Sir James said to himself that the second Miss Brooke was certainly very agreeable as well as pretty , though not , as some people pretended , more clever and sensible than the elder sister . He felt that he had chosen the one who was in all respects the superior ; and a man naturally likes to look forward to having the best . He would be the very Mawworm of bachelors who pretended not to expect it . CHAPTER III . “ Say , goddess , what ensued , when Raphael , The affable archangel . . . Eve The story heard attentive , and was filled With admiration , and deep muse , to hear Of things so high and strange . ” — Paradise Lost , B . vii . If it had really occurred to Mr . Casaubon to think of Miss Brooke as a suitable wife for him , the reasons that might induce her to accept him were already planted in her mind , and by the evening of the next day the reasons had budded and bloomed . For they had had a long conversation in the morning , while Celia , who did not like the company of Mr . Casaubon’s moles and sallowness , had escaped to the vicarage to play with the curate’s ill - shod but merry children . Dorothea by this time had looked deep into the ungauged reservoir of Mr . Casaubon’s mind , seeing reflected there in vague labyrinthine extension every quality she herself brought ; had opened much of her own experience to him , and had understood from him the scope of his great work , also of attractively labyrinthine extent . For he had been as instructive as Milton’s “ affable archangel ; ” and with something of the archangelic manner he told her how he had undertaken to show ( what indeed had been attempted before , but not with that thoroughness , justice of comparison , and effectiveness of arrangement at which Mr . Casaubon aimed ) that all the mythical systems or erratic mythical fragments in the world were corruptions of a tradition originally revealed .
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