Page:Eliot - Middlemarch, vol. III, 1872.djvu/123

Rh find out if there is anything uncomfortable for you to do now, only because Mr Casaubon wished it. As if you had not been uncomfortable enough before. And he doesn't deserve it, and you will find that out. He has behaved very badly. James is as angry with him as can be. And I had better tell you, to prepare you."

"Celia," said Dorothea, entreatingly, "you distress me. Tell me at once what you mean." It glanced through her mind that Mr Casaubon had left the property away from her—which would not be so very distressing.

"Why, he has made a codicil to his will, to say the property was all to go away from you if you married—I mean"

"That is of no consequence," said Dorothea, breaking in impetuously.

"But if you married Mr Ladislaw, not anybody else," Celia went on with persevering quietude. "Of course that is of no consequence in one way—you never would marry Mr Ladislaw; but that only makes it worse of Mr Casaubon."

The blood rushed to Dorothea's face and neck painfully. But Celia was administering what she thought a sobering dose of fact. It was taking up notions that had done Dodo's health so much