"My dear, your clever tongue runs away with you," said Lady Chettam.

"I am sure you would be the last woman to marry again prematurely, if

our dear Rector were taken away."

"Oh, I make no vows; it might be a necessary economy. It is lawful to

marry again, I suppose; else we might as well be Hindoos instead of

Christians. Of course if a woman accepts the wrong man, she must take

the consequences, and one who does it twice over deserves her fate.

But if she can marry blood, beauty, and bravery--the sooner the

better."

"I think the subject of our conversation is very ill-chosen," said Sir

James, with a look of disgust. "Suppose we change it."

"Not on my account, Sir James," said Dorothea, determined not to lose

the opportunity of freeing herself from certain oblique references to

excellent matches. "If you are speaking on my behalf, I can assure you

that no question can be more indifferent and impersonal to me than

second marriage. It is no more to me than if you talked of women going

fox-hunting: whether it is admirable in them or not, I shall not follow

them. Pray let Mrs. Cadwallader amuse herself on that subject as much

as on any other."

"My dear Mrs. Casaubon," said Lady Chettam, in her stateliest way, "you

do not, I hope, think there was any allusion to you in my mentioning

Mrs. Beevor. It was only an instance that occurred to me. She was

step-daughter to Lord Grinsell: he married Mrs. Teveroy for his second

wife. There could be no possible allusion to you."

"Oh no," said Celia. "Nobody chose the subject; it all came out of

Dodo's cap. Mrs. Cadwallader only said what was quite true. A woman

could not be married in a widow's cap, James."

"Hush, my dear!" said Mrs. Cadwallader. "I will not offend again. I

will not even refer to Dido or Zenobia. Only what are we to talk

about? I, for my part, object to the discussion of Human Nature,

because that is the nature of rectors' wives."

Later in the evening, after Mrs. Cadwallader was gone, Celia said

privately to Dorothea, "Really, Dodo, taking your cap off made you like

yourself again in more ways than one. You spoke up just as you used to

do, when anything was said to displease you. But I could hardly make

out whether it was James that you thought wrong, or Mrs. Cadwallader."

"Neither," said Dorothea. "James spoke out of delicacy to me, but he

was mistaken in supposing that I minded what Mrs. Cadwallader said. I

should only mind if there were a law obliging me to take any piece of

blood and beauty that she or anybody else recommended."




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