fford accommodation for all the lives which have
the honor to coexist with hers.

With such a mind, active as phosphorus, biting everything that came
near into the form that suited it, how could Mrs. Cadwallader feel that
the Miss Brookes and their matrimonial prospects were alien to her?
especially as it had been the habit of years for her to scold Mr.
Brooke with the friendliest frankness, and let him know in confidence
that she thought him a poor creature. From the first arrival of the
young ladies in Tipton she had prearranged Dorothea's marriage with Sir
James, and if it had taken place would have been quite sure that it was
her doing: that it should not take place after she had preconceived it,
caused her an irritation which every thinker will sympathize with. She
was the diplomatist of Tipton and Freshitt, and for anything to happen
in spite of her was an offensive irregularity. As to freaks like this
of Miss Brooke's, Mrs. Cadwallader had no patience with them, and now
saw that her opinion of this girl had been infected with some of her
husband's weak charitableness: those Methodistical whims, that air of
being more religious than the rector and curate together, came from a
deeper and more constitutional disease than she had been willing to
believe.

"However," said Mrs. Cadwallader, first to herself and afterwards to
her husband, "I throw her over: there was a chance, if she had married
Sir James, of her becoming a sane, sensible woman. He would never have
contradicted her, and when a woman is not contradicted, she has no
motive for obstinacy in her absurdities. But now I wish her joy of her
hair shirt."

It followed that Mrs. Cadwallader must decide on another match for Sir
James, and having made up her mind that it was to be the younger Miss
Brooke, there could not have been a more skilful move towards the
success of her plan than her hint to the baronet that he had made an
impression on Celia's heart. For he was not one of those gentlemen who
languish after the unattainable Sappho's apple that laughs from the
topmost bough--the charms which

"Smile like the knot of cowslips on the cliff,
Not to be come at by the willing hand."

He had no sonnets to write, and it could not strike him agreeably that
he was not an object of preference to the woman whom he had preferred.
Already the knowledge that Dorothea had chosen Mr. Casaubon had bruised
his attachment and relaxed its hold. Alth