ect on such matters, took it for granted that
according to Mr. Casaubon's arrangement marriage to him, Will Ladislaw,
would mean that she consented to be penniless. That was not what he
could wish for even in his secret heart, or even if she had been ready
to meet such hard contrast for his sake. And then, too, there was the
fresh smart of that disclosure about his mother's family, which if
known would be an added reason why Dorothea's friends should look down
upon him as utterly below her. The secret hope that after some years
he might come back with the sense that he had at least a personal value
equal to her wealth, seemed now the dreamy continuation of a dream.
This change would surely justify him in asking Dorothea to receive him
once more.

But Dorothea on that morning was not at home to receive Will's note.
In consequence of a letter from her uncle announcing his intention to
be at home in a week, she had driven first to Freshitt to carry the
news, meaning to go on to the Grange to deliver some orders with which
her uncle had intrusted her--thinking, as he said, "a little mental
occupation of this sort good for a widow."

If Will Ladislaw could have overheard some of the talk at Freshitt that
morning, he would have felt all his suppositions confirmed as to the
readiness of certain people to sneer at his lingering in the
neighborhood. Sir James, indeed, though much relieved concerning
Dorothea, had been on the watch to learn Ladislaw's movements, and had
an instructed informant in Mr. Standish, who was necessarily in his
confidence on this matter. That Ladislaw had stayed in Middlemarch
nearly two months after he had declared that he was going immediately,
was a fact to embitter Sir James's suspicions, or at least to justify
his aversion to a "young fellow" whom he represented to himself as
slight, volatile, and likely enough to show such recklessness as
naturally went along with a position unriveted by family ties or a
strict profession. But he had just heard something from Standish
which, while it justified these surmises about Will, offered a means of
nullifying all danger with regard to Dorothea.

Unwonted circumstances may make us all rather unlike ourselves: there
are conditions under which the most majestic person is obliged to
sneeze, and our emotions are liable to be acted on in the same
incongruous manner. Good Sir James was this morning so far unlike
himself that he was irritably anxious to sa