“Ah, yes:  one of your secret committee,” said Mrs. Cadwallader, provokingly.

“A coursing fellow, though,” said Sir James, with a fox-hunter’s disgust.

“And one of those who suck the life out of the wretched handloom weavers in Tipton and Freshitt.  That is how his family look so fair and sleek,” said Mrs. Cadwallader.  “Those dark, purple-faced people are an excellent foil.  Dear me, they are like a set of jugs!  Do look at Humphrey:  one might fancy him an ugly archangel towering above them in his white surplice.”

“It’s a solemn thing, though, a funeral,” said Mr. Brooke, “if you take it in that light, you know.”

“But I am not taking it in that light.  I can’t wear my solemnity too often, else it will go to rags.  It was time the old man died, and none of these people are sorry.”

“How piteous!” said Dorothea.  “This funeral seems to me the most dismal thing I ever saw.  It is a blot on the morning I cannot bear to think that any one should die and leave no love behind.”

She was going to say more, but she saw her husband enter and seat himself a little in the background.  The difference his presence made to her was not always a happy one:  she felt that he often inwardly objected to her speech.

“Positively,” exclaimed Mrs. Cadwallader, “there is a new face come out from behind that broad man queerer than any of them:  a little round head with bulging eyes—­a sort of frog-face—­do look.  He must be of another blood, I think.”

“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:  every one 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.