Ladislaw?"
"A young relative of Mr. Casaubon's," said Sir James, promptly.
His good-nature often made him quick and clear-seeing
in personal matters, and he had divined from Dorothea's
glance at her husband that there was some alarm in her mind.
"A very nice young fellow--Casaubon has done everything for him,"
explained Mr. Brooke. "He repays your expense in him, Casaubon,"
he went on, nodding encouragingly. "I hope he will stay with me
a long while and we shall make something of my documents. I have
plenty of ideas and facts, you know, and I can see he is just the man
to put them into shape--remembers what the right quotations are,
omne tulit punctum, and that sort of thing--gives subjects a kind
of turn. I invited him some time ago when you were ill, Casaubon;
Dorothea said you couldn't have anybody in the house, you know,
and she asked me to write."
Poor Dorothea felt that every word of her uncle's was about as
pleasant as a grain of sand in the eye to Mr. Casaubon. It would
be altogether unfitting now to explain that she had not wished her
uncle to invite Will Ladislaw. She could not in the least make clear
to herself the reasons for her husband's dislike to his presence--
a dislike painfully impressed on her by the scene in the library;
but she felt the unbecomingness of saying anything that might convey
a notion of it to others.
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