Brooke, good-humoredly, nursing
his leg, "I can't turn my back on Dorothea. I must be a father
to her up to a certain point. I said, `My dear, I won't refuse
to give you away.' I had spoken strongly before. But I can cut
off the entail, you know. It will cost money and be troublesome;
but I can do it, you know."
Mr. Brooke nodded at Sir James, and felt that he was both showing
his own force of resolution and propitiating what was just in the
Baronet's vexation. He had hit on a more ingenious mode of parrying than
he was aware of. He had touched a motive of which Sir James was ashamed.
The mass of his feeling about Dorothea's marriage to Ladislaw was
due partly to excusable prejudice, or even justifiable opinion,
partly to a jealous repugnance hardly less in Ladislaw's case
than in Casaubon's. He was convinced that the marriage was a fatal
one for Dorothea. But amid that mass ran a vein of which he was
too good and honorable a man to like the avowal even to himself:
it was undeniable that the union of the two estates--Tipton and Freshitt--
lying charmingly within a ring-fence, was a prospect that flattered
him for his son and heir. Hence when Mr. Brooke noddingly appealed
to that motive, Sir James felt a sudden embarrassment; there was
a stoppage in his throat; he even blushed. He had found more words
than usual in the first jet of his anger, but Mr.
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