“Let me see!” said Celia, with awakened curiosity, standing behind Mrs. Cadwallader and leaning forward over her head. “Oh, what an odd face!” Then with a quick change to another sort of surprised expression, she added, “Why, Dodo, you never told me that Mr. Ladislaw was come again!”
Dorothea felt a shock of alarm: everyone noticed her sudden paleness as she looked up immediately at her uncle, while Mr. Casaubon looked at her.
“He came with me, you know; he is my guest—puts up with me at the Grange,” said Mr. Brooke, in his easiest tone, nodding at Dorothea, as if the announcement were just what she might have expected.
“And we have brought the picture at the top of the carriage. I knew you would be pleased with the surprise, Casaubon. There you are to the very life—as Aquinas, you know. Quite the right sort of thing. And you will hear young Ladislaw talk about it. He talks uncommonly well—points out this, that, and the other—knows art and everything of that kind—companionable, you know—is up with you in any track—what I’ve been wanting a long while.”
Mr. Casaubon bowed with cold politeness, mastering his irritation, but only so far as to be silent.
He remembered Will’s letter quite as well as Dorothea did; he had noticed that it was not among the letters which had been reserved for him on his recovery, and secretly concluding that Dorothea had sent word to Will not to come to Lowick, he had shrunk with proud sensitiveness from ever recurring to the subject.
He now inferred that she had asked her uncle to invite Will to the Grange; and she felt it impossible at that moment to enter into any explanation.