Should he apply directly to Mr. Brooke, and demand of that troublesome gentleman to revoke his proposal?  Or should he consult Sir James Chettam, and get him to concur in remonstrance against a step which touched the whole family?  In either case Mr. Casaubon was aware that failure was just as probable as success.  It was impossible for him to mention Dorothea’s name in the matter, and without some alarming urgency Mr. Brooke was as likely as not, after meeting all representations with apparent assent, to wind up by saying, “Never fear, Casaubon!  Depend upon it, young Ladislaw will do you credit.  Depend upon it, I have put my finger on the right thing.”  And Mr. Casaubon shrank nervously from communicating on the subject with Sir James Chettam, between whom and himself there had never been any cordiality, and who would immediately think of Dorothea without any mention of her.

Poor Mr. Casaubon was distrustful of everybody’s feeling towards him, especially as a husband.  To let any one suppose that he was jealous would be to admit their (suspected) view of his disadvantages:  to let them know that he did not find marriage particularly blissful would imply his conversion to their (probably) earlier disapproval.  It would be as bad as letting Carp, and Brasenose generally, know how backward he was in organizing the matter for his “Key to all Mythologies.”  All through his life Mr. Casaubon had been trying not to admit even to himself the inward sores of self-doubt and jealousy.  And on the most delicate of all personal subjects, the habit of proud suspicious reticence told doubly.

Thus Mr. Casaubon remained proudly, bitterly silent.  But he had forbidden Will to come to Lowick Manor, and he was mentally preparing other measures of frustration.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

    “C’est beaucoup que le jugement des hommes sur les actions
    humaines; tot ou tard il devient efficace.”—­GUIZOT.

Sir James Chettam could not look with any satisfaction on Mr. Brooke’s new courses; but it was easier to object than to hinder.  Sir James accounted for his having come in alone one day to lunch with the Cadwalladers by saying—­

“I can’t talk to you as I want, before Celia:  it might hurt her.  Indeed, it would not be right.”

“I know what you mean—­the `Pioneer’ at the Grange!” darted in Mrs. Cadwallader, almost before the last word was off her friend’s tongue.  “It is frightful—­this taking to buying whistles and blowing them in everybody’s hearing.  Lying in bed all day and playing at dominoes, like poor Lord Plessy, would be more private and bearable.”

“I see they are beginning to attack our friend Brooke in the `Trumpet,’” said the Rector, lounging back and smiling easily, as he would have done if he had been attacked himself.  “There are tremendous sarcasms against a landlord not a hundred miles from Middlemarch, who receives his own rents, and makes no returns.”