But Dorothea on that morning was not at home to receive Will's note.

In consequence of a letter from her uncle announcing his intention to

be at home in a week, she had driven first to Freshitt to carry the

news, meaning to go on to the Grange to deliver some orders with which

her uncle had intrusted her--thinking, as he said, "a little mental

occupation of this sort good for a widow."

If Will Ladislaw could have overheard some of the talk at Freshitt that

morning, he would have felt all his suppositions confirmed as to the

readiness of certain people to sneer at his lingering in the

neighborhood. Sir James, indeed, though much relieved concerning

Dorothea, had been on the watch to learn Ladislaw's movements, and had

an instructed informant in Mr. Standish, who was necessarily in his

confidence on this matter. That Ladislaw had stayed in Middlemarch

nearly two months after he had declared that he was going immediately,

was a fact to embitter Sir James's suspicions, or at least to justify

his aversion to a "young fellow" whom he represented to himself as

slight, volatile, and likely enough to show such recklessness as

naturally went along with a position unriveted by family ties or a

strict profession. But he had just heard something from Standish

which, while it justified these surmises about Will, offered a means of

nullifying all danger with regard to Dorothea.

Unwonted circumstances may make us all rather unlike ourselves: there

are conditions under which the most majestic person is obliged to

sneeze, and our emotions are liable to be acted on in the same

incongruous manner. Good Sir James was this morning so far unlike

himself that he was irritably anxious to say something to Dorothea on a

subject which he usually avoided as if it had been a matter of shame to

them both. He could not use Celia as a medium, because he did not

choose that she should know the kind of gossip he had in his mind; and

before Dorothea happened to arrive he had been trying to imagine how,

with his shyness and unready tongue, he could ever manage to introduce

his communication. Her unexpected presence brought him to utter

hopelessness in his own power of saying anything unpleasant; but

desperation suggested a resource; he sent the groom on an unsaddled

horse across the park with a pencilled note to Mrs. Cadwallader, who

already knew the gossip, and would think it no compromise of herself to

repeat it as often as required.

Dorothea was detained on the good pretext that Mr. Garth, whom she

wanted to see, was expected at the hall within the hour, and she was

still talking to Caleb on the gravel when Sir James, on the watch for

the rector's wife, saw her coming and met her with the needful hints.




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