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 say 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.
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