With such a mind, active as phosphorus, biting everything that came near into the form that suited it, how could Mrs. Cadwallader feel that the Miss Brookes and their matrimonial prospects were alien to her? especially as it had been the habit of years for her to scold Mr. Brooke with the friendliest frankness, and let him know in confidence that she thought him a poor creature.  From the first arrival of the young ladies in Tipton she had prearranged Dorothea’s marriage with Sir James, and if it had taken place would have been quite sure that it was her doing:  that it should not take place after she had preconceived it, caused her an irritation which every thinker will sympathize with.  She was the diplomatist of Tipton and Freshitt, and for anything to happen in spite of her was an offensive irregularity.  As to freaks like this of Miss Brooke’s, Mrs. Cadwallader had no patience with them, and now saw that her opinion of this girl had been infected with some of her husband’s weak charitableness:  those Methodistical whims, that air of being more religious than the rector and curate together, came from a deeper and more constitutional disease than she had been willing to believe.

“However,” said Mrs. Cadwallader, first to herself and afterwards to her husband, “I throw her over:  there was a chance, if she had married Sir James, of her becoming a sane, sensible woman.  He would never have contradicted her, and when a woman is not contradicted, she has no motive for obstinacy in her absurdities.  But now I wish her joy of her hair shirt.”

It followed that Mrs. Cadwallader must decide on another match for Sir James, and having made up her mind that it was to be the younger Miss Brooke, there could not have been a more skilful move towards the success of her plan than her hint to the baronet that he had made an impression on Celia’s heart.  For he was not one of those gentlemen who languish after the unattainable Sappho’s apple that laughs from the topmost bough—­the charms which

“Smile like the knot of cowslips on the cliff,
Not to be come at by the willing hand.”

He had no sonnets to write, and it could not strike him agreeably that he was not an object of preference to the woman whom he had preferred.  Already the knowledge that Dorothea had chosen Mr. Casaubon had bruised his attachment and relaxed its hold.  Although Sir James was a sportsman, he had some other feelings towards women than towards grouse and foxes, and did not regard his future wife in the light of prey, valuable chiefly for the excitements of the chase.  Neither was he so well acquainted with the habits of primitive races as to feel that an ideal combat for her, tomahawk in hand, so to speak, was necessary to the historical continuity of the marriage-tie.  On the contrary, having the amiable vanity which knits us to those who are fond of us, and disinclines us to those who are indifferent, and also a good grateful nature, the mere idea that a woman had a kindness towards him spun little threads of tenderness from out his heart towards hers.