“Yes, yes, my dear,” said Mr. Brooke, not quite knowing at what point the discussion had arrived, but coming up to it with a contribution which was generally appropriate.  “It is easy to go too far, you know.  You must not let your ideas run away with you.  And as to being in a hurry to put money into schemes—­it won’t do, you know.  Garth has drawn me in uncommonly with repairs, draining, that sort of thing:  I’m uncommonly out of pocket with one thing or another.  I must pull up.  As for you, Chettam, you are spending a fortune on those oak fences round your demesne.”

Dorothea, submitting uneasily to this discouragement, went with Celia into the library, which was her usual drawing-room.

“Now, Dodo, do listen to what James says,” said Celia, “else you will be getting into a scrape.  You always did, and you always will, when you set about doing as you please.  And I think it is a mercy now after all that you have got James to think for you.  He lets you have your plans, only he hinders you from being taken in.  And that is the good of having a brother instead of a husband.  A husband would not let you have your plans.”

“As if I wanted a husband!” said Dorothea.  “I only want not to have my feelings checked at every turn.”  Mrs. Casaubon was still undisciplined enough to burst into angry tears.

“Now, really, Dodo,” said Celia, with rather a deeper guttural than usual, “you are contradictory:  first one thing and then another.  You used to submit to Mr. Casaubon quite shamefully:  I think you would have given up ever coming to see me if he had asked you.”

“Of course I submitted to him, because it was my duty; it was my feeling for him,” said Dorothea, looking through the prism of her tears.

“Then why can’t you think it your duty to submit a little to what James wishes?” said Celia, with a sense of stringency in her argument.  “Because he only wishes what is for your own good.  And, of course, men know best about everything, except what women know better.”  Dorothea laughed and forgot her tears.

“Well, I mean about babies and those things,” explained Celia.  “I should not give up to James when I knew he was wrong, as you used to do to Mr. Casaubon.”

CHAPTER LXXIII.

    Pity the laden one; this wandering woe
    May visit you and me.

When Lydgate had allayed Mrs. Bulstrode’s anxiety by telling her that her husband had been seized with faintness at the meeting, but that he trusted soon to see him better and would call again the next day, unless she-sent for him earlier, he went directly home, got on his horse, and rode three miles out of the town for the sake of being out of reach.