All 18 Uses of

earnest
in
The Mill on the Floss

"It's apt to make a mess with clothes, taking 'em out and putting 'em in again," said Mrs. Pullet, drawing a bunch of keys from her pocket and looking at them earnestly, "but it 'ud be a pity for you to go away without seeing it.†
Chpt 1.9

earnestly = sincerely or seriously

Mrs. Tulliver looked earnestly at the point indicated, and turned her head on one side.†
Chpt 1.9 *

Mr. Broderip's amiable beaver, as that charming naturalist tells us, busied himself as earnestly in constructing a dam, in a room up three pair of stairs in London, as if he had been laying his foundation in a stream or lake in Upper Canada.†
Chpt 2.1

Meanwhile Tom, who had for the first time sent a poisoned arrow into Philip's heart, had returned to the carriage-house, where he found Mr. Poulter, with a fixed and earnest eye, wasting the perfections of his sword-exercise on probably observant but inappreciative rats.†
Chpt 2.4

earnest = sincere or serious

Maggie put her arm round his neck and kissed him quite earnestly.†
Chpt 2.6

earnestly = sincerely or seriously

When Tom entered she did not speak, but only went up to him, put her arms round his neck, and kissed him earnestly.†
Chpt 2.7

"But, uncle," said Tom, earnestly, "I don't see why the Latin need hinder me from getting on in business.†
Chpt 3.5

She looked up at him with a grave, earnest gaze and said,— "I can't make you think better of me, Tom, by anything I can say.†
Chpt 6.4

earnest = sincere or serious

"Oh, I must go," said Maggie, earnestly, looking at Dr. Kenn with an expression of reliance, as if she had told him her history in those three words.†
Chpt 6.9

earnestly = sincerely or seriously

"You don't believe that; it is not your real feeling," said Maggie, earnestly.†
Chpt 6.11

Maggie had become more and more earnest as she went on; her face had become flushed, and her eyes fuller and fuller of appealing love.†
Chpt 6.11

earnest = sincere or serious

"Remember what you felt weeks ago," she began, with beseeching earnestness; "remember what we both felt,—that we owed ourselves to others, and must conquer every inclination which could make us false to that debt.†
Chpt 6.14

earnestness = sincerity or seriousness

If we—if I had been better, nobler, those claims would have been so strongly present with me,—I should have felt them pressing on my heart so continually, just as they do now in the moments when my conscience is awake,—that the opposite feeling would never have grown in me, as it has done; it would have been quenched at once, I should have prayed for help so earnestly, I should have rushed away as we rush from hideous danger.†
Chpt 6.14

earnestly = sincerely or seriously

I, too, am an erring mortal, liable to stumble, apt to come short of my most earnest efforts;†
Chpt 7.4

earnest = sincere or serious

Dr. Kenn, at first enlightened only by a few hints as to the new turn which gossip and slander had taken in relation to Maggie, had recently been made more fully aware of it by an earnest remonstrance from one of his male parishioners against the indiscretion of persisting in the attempt to overcome the prevalent feeling in the parish by a course of resistance.†
Chpt 7.5

Definitions:

(1) (earnest)
characterized by sincere belief

or:

intensely or excessively serious or determined
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
meaning too rare to warrant focus:

Earnest can also be used as a name (variant spelling of Ernest), or to signify the seriousness of a pledge made (as when earnest money is included with an offer to purchase a home).