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 “Don’t take the throwing out of the Bill so much to heart, Brooke; you've got all the riff-raff of the country on your side.”

“The Bill, eh? ah!” said Mr Brooke, with a mild distractedness of manner. “Thrown out, you know, eh? The Lords are going too far, though. They’ll have to pull up. Sad news, you know. I mean, here at home—sad news. But you must not blame me, Chettam.”

“What is the matter?” said Sir James. “Not another gamekeeper shot, I hope? It's what I should expect, when a fellow like Trapping Bass is let off so easily.”

“Gamekeeper? No. Let us go in; I can tell you all in the house, you know,” said Mr Brooke, nodding at the Cadwalladers, to show that he included them in his confidence. “As to poachers like Trapping Bass, you know, Chettam,” he continued, as they were entering, “when you are a magistrate, you'll not find it so easy to commit. Severity is all very well, but it’s a great deal easier when you’ve got somebody to do it for you. You have a soft place in your heart yourself, you know—you’re not a Draco, a Jeffreys, that sort of thing.”

Mr Brooke was evidently in a state of nervous perturbation. When he had something painful to tell, it was usually his way to introduce it among a number of disjointed particulars, as if it were a medicine that would get a milder flavour by mixing. He continued his chat with Sir James about the poachers until they were all seated, and Mrs Cadwallader, impatient of this drivelling, said—

“I’m dying to know the sad news. The gamekeeper is not shot: that is settled. What is it, then?”

“Well, it’s a very trying thing, you know,” said Mr Brooke. “I’m glad you and the Rector are here; it’s a family matter—but you will help us all to bear it, Cadwallader. I’ve got to break it to you, my dear.” Here Mr Brooke looked at Celia—“You've no notion what it is, you know. And, Chettam, it will annoy you uncommonly—but, you see, you have not benbeen [sic] able to hinder it, any more than I have. There’s something singular in things: they come round, you know.”

“It must be about Dodo,” said Celia, who had been used to think of her sister as the dangerous part of the family machinery. She had seated herself on a low stool against her husband’s knee.

“For God’s sake let us hear what it is!” said Sir James.

“Well, you know, Chettam, I couldn’t help Casaubon’s will: it was a sort of will to make things worse.”

“Exactly,” said Sir James, hastily. “But what is worse?”

“Dorothea is going to be married again, you know,” said Mr Brooke, nodding towards Celia, who immediately looked up at her husband with a frightened glance, and put her hand on his knee.

Sir James was almost white with anger, but he did not speak.

“Merciful heaven!” said Mrs Cadwallader. “Not to young Ladislaw?”

Mr Brooke nodded, saying, “Yes; to Ladislaw,” and then fell into a prudential silence.