ee 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 u