manner. I wonder a man like you, Cadwallader—a man with daughters, can look at the affair with indifference: and with such a heart as yours! Do think seriously about it.”
“I am not joking; I am as serious as possible,” said the Rector, with a provoking little inward laugh. “You are as bad as Elinor. She has been wanting me to go and lecture Brooke; and I have reminded her that her friends had a very poor opinion of the match she made when she married me.”
“But look at Casaubon,” said Sir James, indignantly. “He must be fifty, and I don’t believe he could ever have been much more than the shadow of a man. Look at his legs!”
“Confound you handsome young fellows! you think of having it all your own way in the world. You don’t understand women. They don’t admire you half so much as you admire yourselves. Elinor used to tell her sisters that she married me for my ugliness—it was so various and amusing that it had quite conquered her prudence.”
“You! it was easy enough for a woman to love you. But this is no question of beauty. I don’t like Casaubon.” This was Sir James’s strongest way of implying that he thought ill of a man’s character.
“Why? what do you know against him?” said the Rector laying down his reels, and putting his thumbs into his armholes with an air of attention.
Sir James paused. He did not usually find it easy to give his reasons: it seemed to him strange that people should not know them without being told, since he only felt what was reasonable. At last he said—
“Now, Cadwallader, has he got any heart?”
“Well, yes. I don’t mean of the melting sort, but a sound kernel, that you may be sure of. He is very good to his poor relations: pensions several of