Mr. Casaubon bowed with cold politeness, mastering his irritation, but
only so far as to be silent. He remembered Will's letter quite as well
as Dorothea did; he had noticed that it was not among the letters which
had been reserved for him on his recovery, and secretly concluding that
Dorothea had sent word to Will not to come to Lowick, he had shrunk
with proud sensitiveness from ever recurring to the subject. He now
inferred that she had asked her uncle to invite Will to the Grange; and
she felt it impossible at that moment to enter into any explanation.
Mrs. Cadwallader's eyes, diverted from the churchyard, saw a good deal
of dumb show which was not so intelligible to her as she could have
desired, and could not repress the question, "Who is Mr. Ladislaw?"
"A young relative of Mr. Casaubon's," said Sir James, promptly. His
good-nature often made him quick and clear-seeing in personal matters,
and he had divined from Dorothea's glance at her husband that there was
some alarm in her mind.
"A very nice young fellow--Casaubon has done everything for him,"
explained Mr. Brooke. "He repays your expense in him, Casaubon," he
went on, nodding encouragingly. "I hope he will stay with me a long
while and we shall make something of my documents. I have plenty of
ideas and facts, you know, and I can see he is just the man to put them
into shape--remembers what the right quotations are, omne tulit
punctum, and that sort of thing--gives subjects a kind of turn. I
invited him some time ago when you were ill, Casaubon; Dorothea said
you couldn't have anybody in the house, you know, and she asked me to
write."
Poor Dorothea felt that every word of her uncle's was about as pleasant
as a grain of sand in the eye to Mr. Casaubon. It would be altogether
unfitting now to explain that she had not wished her uncle to invite
Will Ladislaw. She could not in the least make clear to herself the
reasons for her husband's dislike to his presence--a dislike painfully
impressed on her by the scene in the library; but she felt the
unbecomingness of saying anything that might convey a notion of it to
others. Mr. Casaubon, indeed, had not thoroughly represented those
mixed reasons to himself; irritated feeling with him, as with all of
us, seeking rather for justification than for self-knowledge. But he
wished to repress outward signs, and only Dorothea could discern the
changes in her husband's face before he observed with more of dignified
bending and sing-song than usual--
"You are exceedingly hospitable, my dear sir; and I owe you
acknowledgments for exercising your hospitality towards a relative of
mine."