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.
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