Not that she now imagined Mr. Casaubon to be already an accepted
lover: she had only begun to feel disgust at the possibility that
anything in Dorothea's mind could tend towards such an issue.
Here was something really to vex her about Dodo: it was all very
well not to accept Sir James Chettam, but the idea of marrying
Mr. Casaubon! Celia felt a sort of shame mingled with a sense
of the ludicrous. But perhaps Dodo, if she were really bordering
on such an extravagance, might be turned away from it: experience
had often shown that her impressibility might be calculated on.
The day was damp, and they were not going to walk out, so they both
went up to their sitting-room; and there Celia observed that Dorothea,
instead of settling down with her usual diligent interest to
some occupation, simply leaned her elbow on an open book and looked
out of the window at the great cedar silvered with the damp.
She herself had taken up the making of a toy for the curate's children,
and was not going to enter on any subject too precipitately.

Dorothea was in fact thinking that it was desirable for Celia to know
of the momentous change in Mr. Casaubon's position since he had last
been in the house: it did not seem fair to leave her in ignorance
of what would necessarily affect her attitude towards him; but it was
impossible not to shrink from telling her. Dorothea accused herself
of some meanness in this timidity: it was always odious to her to
have any small fears or contrivances about her actions, but at this
moment she was seeking the highest aid possible that she might not
dread the corrosiveness of Celia's pretty carnally minded prose.
Her reverie was broken, and the difficulty of decision banished,
by Celia's small and rather guttural voice speaking in its usual tone,
of a remark aside or a "by the bye."