The next day, Mr. Casaubon received the following answer from Will

Ladislaw:--

"DEAR MR. CASAUBON,--I have given all due consideration to your letter

of yesterday, but I am unable to take precisely your view of our mutual

position. With the fullest acknowledgment of your generous conduct to

me in the past, I must still maintain that an obligation of this kind

cannot fairly fetter me as you appear to expect that it should.

Granted that a benefactor's wishes may constitute a claim; there must

always be a reservation as to the quality of those wishes. They may

possibly clash with more imperative considerations. Or a benefactor's

veto might impose such a negation on a man's life that the consequent

blank might be more cruel than the benefaction was generous. I am

merely using strong illustrations. In the present case I am unable to

take your view of the bearing which my acceptance of occupation--not

enriching certainly, but not dishonorable--will have on your own

position which seems to me too substantial to be affected in that

shadowy manner. And though I do not believe that any change in our

relations will occur (certainly none has yet occurred) which can

nullify the obligations imposed on me by the past, pardon me for not

seeing that those obligations should restrain me from using the

ordinary freedom of living where I choose, and maintaining myself by

any lawful occupation I may choose. Regretting that there exists this

difference between us as to a relation in which the conferring of

benefits has been entirely on your side--

I remain, yours with persistent obligation,

WILL LADISLAW."

Poor Mr. Casaubon felt (and must not we, being impartial, feel with him

a little?) that no man had juster cause for disgust and suspicion than

he. Young Ladislaw, he was sure, meant to defy and annoy him, meant to

win Dorothea's confidence and sow her mind with disrespect, and perhaps

aversion, towards her husband. Some motive beneath the surface had

been needed to account for Will's sudden change of course in rejecting Mr.

Casaubon's aid and quitting his travels; and this defiant determination

to fix himself in the neighborhood by taking up something so much at

variance with his former choice as Mr. Brooke's Middlemarch projects,

revealed clearly enough that the undeclared motive had relation to

Dorothea. Not for one moment did Mr. Casaubon suspect Dorothea of any

doubleness: he had no suspicions of her, but he had (what was little

less uncomfortable) the positive knowledge that her tendency to form

opinions about her husband's conduct was accompanied with a disposition

to regard Will Ladislaw favorably and be influenced by what he said.

His own proud reticence had prevented him from ever being undeceived in

the supposition that Dorothea had originally asked her uncle to invite

Will to his house.




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