y something to Dorothea on a
subject which he usually avoided as if it had been a matter of shame to
them both. He could not use Celia as a medium, because he did not
choose that she should know the kind of gossip he had in his mind; and
before Dorothea happened to arrive he had been trying to imagine how,
with his shyness and unready tongue, he could ever manage to introduce
his communication. Her unexpected presence brought him to utter
hopelessness in his own power of saying anything unpleasant; but
desperation suggested a resource; he sent the groom on an unsaddled
horse across the park with a pencilled note to Mrs. Cadwallader, who
already knew the gossip, and would think it no compromise of herself to
repeat it as often as required.

Dorothea was detained on the good pretext that Mr. Garth, whom she
wanted to see, was expected at the hall within the hour, and she was
still talking to Caleb on the gravel when Sir James, on the watch for
the rector's wife, saw her coming and met her with the needful hints.

"Enough! I understand,"--said Mrs. Cadwallader. "You shall be
innocent. I am such a blackamoor that I cannot smirch myself."

"I don't mean that it's of any consequence," said Sir James, disliking
that Mrs. Cadwallader should understand too much. "Only it is
desirable that Dorothea should know there are reasons why she should
not receive him again; and I really can't say so to her. It will come
lightly from you."

It came very lightly indeed. When Dorothea quitted Caleb and turned to
meet them, it appeared that Mrs. Cadwallader had stepped across the
park by the merest chance in the world, just to chat with Celia in a
matronly way about the baby. And so Mr. Brooke was coming back?
Delightful!--coming back, it was to be hoped, quite cured of
Parliamentary fever and pioneering. Apropos of the "Pioneer"--somebody
had prophesied that it would soon be like a dying dolphin, and turn all
colors for want of knowing how to help itself, because Mr. Brooke's
protege, the brilliant young Ladislaw, was gone or going. Had Sir
James heard that?

The three were walking along the gravel slowly, and Sir James, turning
aside to whip a shrub, said he had heard something of that sort.

"All false!" said Mrs. Cadwallader. "He is not gone, or going,
apparently; the 'Pioneer' keeps its color, and Mr. Orlando Ladislaw is
making a sad dark-blue scandal by warbling continually with your Mr.
Lydgate's wife, who they tell