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.
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