The Codicil's Cruel Trap — Middlemarch

The day after Casaubon's burial, Dorothea still cannot leave her room. Sir James Chettam stands on the hearth-rug at Lowick Grange with intense disgust and tells Mr. Brooke he wishes they could hinder Dorothea from knowing what the folded paper in Brooke's hand contains. Brooke protests that as executrix she has her notions and will want to act; he can hinder nothing.

Sir James plans to keep all business from her until she can move to Freshitt with Celia and the baby, and he demands that Brooke get rid of Ladislaw and send him out of the country. Brooke answers in his exasperatingly placid way: Will is invaluable to the Pioneer, cannot be shipped off like cattle, and sending him away might look as if they distrusted Dorothea. Sir James calls the codicil the meanest, most ungentlemanly action imaginable, a positive insult coupling Dorothea's name with Will's; Brooke says it is Casaubon's oddity, that she does not want to marry Will, and that gossip will talk regardless.

Sir James offers to spend money to place Will abroad; Brooke praises him as an agitator few could match. When Sir James asks if Brooke declines to act, Brooke will not say decline but sees nothing he can do. Sir James bitterly notes it would have been less indelicate to forbid all remarriage; Brooke thinks that worse. Sir James suspects Ladislaw; Brooke says suspicion cannot justify packing him off. The interview ends with Sir James vowing Dorothea was sacrificed once through careless friends and he will protect her now, while Brooke, pleased to keep Will for the coming dissolution, approves sending her to Freshitt as soon as possible.