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 “My dear sir,” said Sir James, impatiently, “that is neither here nor there. The question is, whether you don’t see with me the propriety of sending young Ladislaw away?”

“Well, no, not the urgency of the thing. By-and-by, perhaps, it may come round. As to gossip, you know, sending him away won't hinder gossip. People say what they like to say, not what they have chapter and verse for,” said Mr Brooke, becoming acute about the truths that lay on the side of his own wishes. “I might get rid of Ladislaw up to a certain point—take away the ‘Pioneer’ from him, and that sort of thing; but I couldn’t send him out of the country if he didn’t choose to go—didn’t choose, you know.”

Mr Brooke, persisting as quietly as if he were only discussing the nature of last year's weather, and nodding at the end with his usual amenity, was an exasperating form of obstinacy.

“Good God!” said Sir James, with as much passion as he ever showed, “let us get him a post; let us spend money on him. If he could go in the suite of some Colonial Governor! Grampus might take him—and I could write to Fulke about it.”

“But Ladislaw won't be shipped off like a head of cattle, my dear fellow; Ladislaw has his ideas. It's my opinion that if he were to part from me to-morrow, you'd only hear the more of him in the country. With his talent for speaking and drawing up documents, there are few men who could come up to him as an agitator—an agitator, you know.”

“Agitator!” said Sir James, with bitter emphasis, feeling that the syllables of this word properly repeated were a sufficient exposure of its hatefulness.

“But be reasonable, Chettam. Dorothea, now. As you say, she had better go to Celia as soon as possible. She can stay under your roof, and in the mean time things may come round quietly. Don’t let us be firing off our guns in a hurry, you know. Standish will keep our counsel, and the news will be old before it’s known. Twenty things may happen to carry off Ladislaw—without my doing anything, you know.”

“Then I am to conclude that you decline to do anything?”

“Decline, Chettam?—no—I didn’t say decline. But I really don’t see what I could do. Ladislaw is a gentleman.”

“I am glad to hear it!” said Sir James, his irritation making him forget himself a little. “I am sure Casaubon was not.”

“Well, it would have been worse if he had made the codicil to hinder her from marrying again at all, you know.”

“I don’t know that,” said Sir James. “It would have been less indelicate.”

“One of poor Casaubon’s freaks! That attack upset his brain a little. It all goes for nothing. She doesn’t want to marry Ladislaw.”

“But this codicil is framed so as to make everybody believe that she did. I don’t believe anything of the sort about Dorothea,” said