“That is what I expect, you know,” said Mr. Brooke, not wishing to betray how little he enjoyed this prophetic sketch—­“what I expect as an independent man.  As to the Whigs, a man who goes with the thinkers is not likely to be hooked on by any party.  He may go with them up to a certain point—­up to a certain point, you know.  But that is what you ladies never understand.”

“Where your certain point is?  No.  I should like to be told how a man can have any certain point when he belongs to no party—­leading a roving life, and never letting his friends know his address. `Nobody knows where Brooke will be—­there’s no counting on Brooke’—­that is what people say of you, to be quite frank.  Now, do turn respectable.  How will you like going to Sessions with everybody looking shy on you, and you with a bad conscience and an empty pocket?”

“I don’t pretend to argue with a lady on politics,” said Mr. Brooke, with an air of smiling indifference, but feeling rather unpleasantly conscious that this attack of Mrs. Cadwallader’s had opened the defensive campaign to which certain rash steps had exposed him.  “Your sex are not thinkers, you know—­varium et mutabile semper—­that kind of thing.  You don’t know Virgil.  I knew”—­Mr. Brooke reflected in time that he had not had the personal acquaintance of the Augustan poet—­“I was going to say, poor Stoddart, you know.  That was what he said.  You ladies are always against an independent attitude—­a man’s caring for nothing but truth, and that sort of thing.  And there is no part of the county where opinion is narrower than it is here—­I don’t mean to throw stones, you know, but somebody is wanted to take the independent line; and if I don’t take it, who will?”

“Who?  Why, any upstart who has got neither blood nor position.  People of standing should consume their independent nonsense at home, not hawk it about.  And you! who are going to marry your niece, as good as your daughter, to one of our best men.  Sir James would be cruelly annoyed:  it will be too hard on him if you turn round now and make yourself a Whig sign-board.”

Mr. Brooke again winced inwardly, for Dorothea’s engagement had no sooner been decided, than he had thought of Mrs. Cadwallader’s prospective taunts.  It might have been easy for ignorant observers to say, “Quarrel with Mrs. Cadwallader;” but where is a country gentleman to go who quarrels with his oldest neighbors?  Who could taste the fine flavor in the name of Brooke if it were delivered casually, like wine without a seal?  Certainly a man can only be cosmopolitan up to a certain point.

“I hope Chettam and I shall always be good friends; but I am sorry to say there is no prospect of his marrying my niece,” said Mr. Brooke, much relieved to see through the window that Celia was coming in.

“Why not?” said Mrs. Cadwallader, with a sharp note of surprise.  “It is hardly a fortnight since you and I were talking about it.”