"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."