n't like that," said the Rector.

"There _is_ some foreign blood in Ladislaw," returned Sir James. "I
hope he won't go into extreme opinions and carry Brooke on."

"Oh, he's a dangerous young sprig, that Mr. Ladislaw," said Mrs.
Cadwallader, "with his opera songs and his ready tongue. A sort of
Byronic hero--an amorous conspirator, it strikes me. And Thomas
Aquinas is not fond of him. I could see that, the day the picture was
brought."

"I don't like to begin on the subject with Casaubon," said Sir James.
"He has more right to interfere than I. But it's a disagreeable affair
all round. What a character for anybody with decent connections to
show himself in!--one of those newspaper fellows! You have only to
look at Keck, who manages the 'Trumpet.' I saw him the other day with
Hawley. His writing is sound enough, I believe, but he's such a low
fellow, that I wished he had been on the wrong side."

"What can you expect with these peddling Middlemarch papers?" said the
Rector. "I don't suppose you could get a high style of man anywhere to
be writing up interests he doesn't really care about, and for pay that
hardly keeps him in at elbows."

"Exactly: that makes it so annoying that Brooke should have put a man
who has a sort of connection with the family in a position of that
kind. For my part, I think Ladislaw is rather a fool for accepting."

"It is Aquinas's fault," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "Why didn't he use his
interest to get Ladislaw made an attache or sent to India? That is how
families get rid of troublesome sprigs."

"There is no knowing to what lengths the mischief may go," said Sir
James, anxiously. "But if Casaubon says nothing, what can I do?"

"Oh my dear Sir James," said the Rector, "don't let us make too much of
all this. It is likely enough to end in mere smoke. After a month or
two Brooke and this Master Ladislaw will get tired of each other;
Ladislaw will take wing; Brooke will sell the 'Pioneer,' and everything
will settle down again as usual."

"There is one good chance--that he will not like to feel his money
oozing away," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "If I knew the items of election
expenses I could scare him. It's no use plying him with wide words
like Expenditure: I wouldn't talk of phlebotomy, I would empty a pot of
leeches upon him. What we good stingy people don't like, is having our
sixpences sucked away from us."

"And he will not like having things raked up against him," sa