prompt:
Chapter: Clown. . . . 'Twas in the Bunch of Grapes, where, indeed,
            you have a delight to sit, have you not?
    Froth. I have so: because it is an open room, and good for winter.
      Clo. Why, very well then: I hope here be truths.
                                     --Measure for Measure.

Five days after the death of Raffles, Mr. Bambridge was standing at his
leisure under the large archway leading into the yard of the Green
Dragon.  He was not fond of solitary contemplation, but he had only
just come out of the house, and any human figure standing at ease under
the archway in the early afternoon was as certain to attract
companionship as a pigeon which has found something worth pecking at.
In this case there was no material object to feed upon, but the eye of
reason saw a probability of mental sustenance in the shape of gossip.
Mr. Hopkins, the meek-mannered draper opposite, was the first to act on
this inward vision, being the more ambitious of a little masculine talk
because his customers were chiefly women.  Mr. Bambridge was rather
curt to the draper, feeling that Hopkins was of course glad to talk to
_him_, but that he was not going to waste much of his talk on Hopkins.
Soon, however, there was a small cluster of more important listeners,
who were either deposited from the passers-by, or had sauntered to the
spot expressly to see if there were anything going on at the Green
Dragon; and Mr. Bambridge was finding it worth his while to say many
impressive things about the fine studs he had been seeing and the
purchases he had made on a journey in the north from which he had just
returned.  Gentlemen present were assured that when they could show him
anything to cut out a blood mare, a bay, rising four, which was to be
seen at Doncaster if they chose to go and look at it, Mr. Bambridge
would gratify them by being shot "from here to Hereford."  Also, a pair
of blacks which he was going to put into the break recalled vividly to
his mind a pair which he had sold to Faulkner in '19, for a hundred
guineas, and which Faulkner had sold for a hundred and sixty two months
later--any gent who could disprove this statement being offered the
privilege of calling Mr. Bambridge by a very ugly name until the
exercise made his throat dry.

When the discourse was at this point of animation, came up Mr. Frank
Hawley.  He was not a man to compromise his dignity by lounging at the
Green Dragon, but happening to pass along the High Street and seeing
Bambridge on the other side, he took some of his long strides across to
ask the horsedealer whether he had found the first-rate gig-horse which
he had engaged to look for.  Mr. Hawley was requested to wait until he
had seen a gray selected at Bilkley: if that did not meet his wishes to
a hair, Bambridge did not know a horse when he saw it, which seemed to
be the highest conceivable unlikelihood.  Mr. Hawley, standing with his
back to the street, was fixing a time for looking at the gray and
seeing it tried, when a horseman passed slowly by.

"Bulstrode!" said two or three voices at once in a low tone, one of
them, which was the draper's, respectfully prefixing the "Mr.;" but
nobody having more intention in this interjectural naming than if they
had said "the Riverston coach" when that vehicle appeared in the
distance.  Mr. Hawley gave a careless glance round at Bulstrode's back,
but as Bambridge's eyes followed it he made a sarcastic grimace.

"By jingo! that reminds me," he began, lowering his voice a little, "I
picked up something else at Bilkley besides your gig-horse, Mr. Hawley.
I picked up a fine story about Bulstrode.  Do you know how he came by
his fortune?  Any gentleman wanting a bit of curious information, I can
give it him free of expense.  If everybody got their deserts, Bulstrode
might have had to say his prayers at Botany Bay."

"What do you mean?" said Mr. Hawley, thrusting his hands into his
pockets, and pushing a little forward under the archway.  If Bulstrode
should turn out to be a rascal, Frank Hawley had a prophetic soul.

"I had it from a party who was an old chum of Bulstrode's.  I'll tell
you where I first picked him up," said Bambridge, with a sudden gesture
of his fore-finger. "He was at Larcher's sale, but I knew nothing of
him then--he slipped through my fingers--was after Bulstrode, no
doubt.  He tells me he can tap Bulstrode to any amount, knows all his
secrets.  However, he blabbed to me at Bilkley: he takes a stiff glass.
Damme if I think he meant to turn king's evidence; but he's that sort
of bragging fellow, the bragging runs over hedge and ditch with him,
till he'd brag of a spavin as if it 'ud fetch money.  A man should know
when to pull up." Mr. Bambridge made this remark with an air of
disgust, satisfied that his own bragging showed a fine sense of the
marketable.

"What's the man's name?  Where can he be found?" said Mr. Hawley.

"As to where he is to be found, I left him to it at the Saracen's Head;
but his name is Raffles."

"Raffles!" exclaimed Mr. Hopkins.  "I furnished his funeral yesterday.
He was buried at Lowick.  Mr. Bulstrode followed him.  A very decent
funeral."  There was a strong sensation among the listeners.  Mr.
Bambridge gave an ejaculation in which "brimstone" was the mildest
word, and Mr. Hawley, knitting his brows and bending his head forward,
exclaimed, "What?--where did the man die?"

"At Stone Court," said the draper.  "The housekeeper said he was a
relation of the master's. He came there ill on Friday."

"Why, it was on Wednesday I took a glass with him," interposed
Bambridge.

"Did any doctor attend him?" said Mr. Hawley

"Yes.  Mr. Lydgate.  Mr. Bulstrode sat up with him one night.  He died
the third morning."

"Go on, Bambridge," said Mr. Hawley, insistently.  "What did this
fellow say about Bulstrode?"

The group had already become larger, the town-clerk's presence being a
guarantee that something worth listening to was going on there; and Mr.
Bambridge delivered his narrative in the hearing of seven.  It was
mainly what we know, including the fact about Will Ladislaw, with some
local color and circumstance added: it was what Bulstrode had dreaded
the betrayal of--and hoped to have buried forever with the corpse of
Raffles--it was that haunting ghost of his earlier life which as he
rode past the archway of the Green Dragon he was trusting that
Providence had delivered him from.  Yes, Providence.  He had not
confessed to himself yet that he had done anything in the way of
contrivance to this end; he had accepted what seemed to have been
offered.  It was impossible to prove that he had done anything which
hastened the departure of that man's soul.

But this gossip about Bulstrode spread through Middlemarch like the
smell of fire.  Mr. Frank Hawley followed up his information by sending
a clerk whom he could trust to Stone Court on a pretext of inquiring
about hay, but really to gather all that could be learned about Raffles
and his illness from Mrs. Abel.  In this way it came to his knowledge
that Mr. Garth had carried the man to Stone Court in his gig; and Mr.
Hawley in consequence took an opportunity of seeing Caleb, calling at
his office to ask whether he had time to undertake an arbitration if it
were required, and then asking him incidentally about Raffles.  Caleb
was betrayed into no word injurious to Bulstrode beyond the fact which
he was forced to admit, that he had given up acting for him within the
last week.  Mr Hawley drew his inferences, and feeling convinced that
Raffles had told his story to Garth, and that Garth had given up
Bulstrode's affairs in consequence, said so a few hours later to Mr.
Toller.  The statement was passed on until it had quite lost the stamp
of an inference, and was taken as information coming straight from
Garth, so that even a diligent historian might have concluded Caleb to
be the chief publisher of Bulstrode's misdemeanors.

Mr. Hawley was not slow to perceive that there was no handle for the
law either in the revelations made by Raffles or in the circumstances
of his death.  He had himself ridden to Lowick village that he might
look at the register and talk over the whole matter with Mr.
Farebrother, who was not more surprised than the lawyer that an ugly
secret should have come to light about Bulstrode, though he had always
had justice enough in him to hinder his antipathy from turning into
conclusions.  But while they were talking another combination was
silently going forward in Mr. Farebrother's mind, which foreshadowed
what was soon to be loudly spoken of in Middlemarch as a necessary
"putting of two and two together."  With the reasons which kept
Bulstrode in dread of Raffles there flashed the thought that the dread
might have something to do with his munificence towards his medical
man; and though he resisted the suggestion that it had been consciously
accepted in any way as a bribe, he had a foreboding that this
complication of things might be of malignant effect on Lydgate's
reputation.  He perceived that Mr. Hawley knew nothing at present of
the sudden relief from debt, and he himself was careful to glide away
from all approaches towards the subject.

"Well," he said, with a deep breath, wanting to wind up the illimitable
discussion of what might have been, though nothing could be legally
proven, "it is a strange story.  So our mercurial Ladislaw has a queer
genealogy!  A high-spirited young lady and a musical Polish patriot
made a likely enough stock for him to spring from, but I should never
have suspected a grafting of the Jew pawnbroker.  However, there's no
knowing what a mixture will turn out beforehand.  Some sorts of dirt
serve to clarify."

"It's just what I should have expected," said Mr. Hawley, mounting his
horse.  "Any cursed alien blood, Jew, Corsican, or Gypsy."

"I know he's one of your black sheep, Hawley.  But he is really a
disinterested, unworldly fellow," said Mr. Farebrother, smiling.

"Ay, ay, that is your Whiggish twist," said Mr. Hawley, who had been in
the habit of saying apologetically that Farebrother was such a damned
pleasant good-hearted fellow you would mistake him for a Tory.

Mr. Hawley rode home without thinking of Lydgate's attendance on
Raffles in any other light than as a piece of evidence on the side of
Bulstrode.  But the news that Lydgate had all at once become able not
only to get rid of the execution in his house but to pay all his debts
in Middlemarch was spreading fast, gathering round it conjectures and
comments which gave it new body and impetus, and soon filling the ears
of other persons besides Mr. Hawley, who were not slow to see a
significant relation between this sudden command of money and
Bulstrode's desire to stifle the scandal of Raffles.  That the money
came from Bulstrode would infallibly have been guessed even if there
had been no direct evidence of it; for it had beforehand entered into
the gossip about Lydgate's affairs, that neither his father-in-law nor
his own family would do anything for him, and direct evidence was
furnished not only by a clerk at the Bank, but by innocent Mrs.
Bulstrode herself, who mentioned the loan to Mrs. Plymdale, who
mentioned it to her daughter-in-law of the house of Toller, who
mentioned it generally.  The business was felt to be so public and
important that it required dinners to feed it, and many invitations
were just then issued and accepted on the strength of this scandal
concerning Bulstrode and Lydgate; wives, widows, and single ladies took
their work and went out to tea oftener than usual; and all public
conviviality, from the Green Dragon to Dollop's, gathered a zest which
could not be won from the question whether the Lords would throw out
the Reform Bill.

For hardly anybody doubted that some scandalous reason or other was at
the bottom of Bulstrode's liberality to Lydgate.  Mr. Hawley indeed, in
the first instance, invited a select party, including the two
physicians, with Mr Toller and Mr. Wrench, expressly to hold a close
discussion as to the probabilities of Raffles's illness, reciting to
them all the particulars which had been gathered from Mrs. Abel in
connection with Lydgate's certificate, that the death was due to
delirium tremens; and the medical gentlemen, who all stood
undisturbedly on the old paths in relation to this disease, declared
that they could see nothing in these particulars which could be
transformed into a positive ground of suspicion.  But the moral grounds
of suspicion remained: the strong motives Bulstrode clearly had for
wishing to be rid of Raffles, and the fact that at this critical moment
he had given Lydgate the help which he must for some time have known
the need for; the disposition, moreover, to believe that Bulstrode
would be unscrupulous, and the absence of any indisposition to believe
that Lydgate might be as easily bribed as other haughty-minded men when
they have found themselves in want of money.  Even if the money had
been given merely to make him hold his tongue about the scandal of
Bulstrode's earlier life, the fact threw an odious light on Lydgate,
who had long been sneered at as making himself subservient to the
banker for the sake of working himself into predominance, and
discrediting the elder members of his profession.  Hence, in spite of
the negative as to any direct sign of guilt in relation to the death at
Stone Court, Mr. Hawley's select party broke up with the sense that the
affair had "an ugly look."

But this vague conviction of indeterminable guilt, which was enough to
keep up much head-shaking and biting innuendo even among substantial
professional seniors, had for the general mind all the superior power
of mystery over fact.  Everybody liked better to conjecture how the
thing was, than simply to know it; for conjecture soon became more
confident than knowledge, and had a more liberal allowance for the
incompatible.  Even the more definite scandal concerning Bulstrode's
earlier life was, for some minds, melted into the mass of mystery, as
so much lively metal to be poured out in dialogue, and to take such
fantastic shapes as heaven pleased.

This was the tone of thought chiefly sanctioned by Mrs. Dollop, the
spirited landlady of the Tankard in Slaughter Lane, who had often to
resist the shallow pragmatism of customers disposed to think that their
reports from the outer world were of equal force with what had "come
up" in her mind.  How it had been brought to her she didn't know, but
it was there before her as if it had been "scored with the chalk on the
chimney-board--" as Bulstrode should say, "his inside was _that black_
as if the hairs of his head knowed the thoughts of his heart, he'd tear
'em up by the roots."

"That's odd," said Mr. Limp, a meditative shoemaker, with weak eyes and
a piping voice.  "Why, I read in the 'Trumpet' that was what the Duke
of Wellington said when he turned his coat and went over to the Romans."

"Very like," said Mrs. Dollop.  "If one raskill said it, it's more
reason why another should.  But hypo_crite_ as he's been, and holding
things with that high hand, as there was no parson i' the country good
enough for him, he was forced to take Old Harry into his counsel, and
Old Harry's been too many for him."

"Ay, ay, he's a 'complice you can't send out o' the country," said Mr.
Crabbe, the glazier, who gathered much news and groped among it dimly.
"But by what I can make out, there's them says Bulstrode was for
running away, for fear o' being found out, before now."

"He'll be drove away, whether or no," said Mr. Dill, the barber, who
had just dropped in.  "I shaved Fletcher, Hawley's clerk, this
morning--he's got a bad finger--and he says they're all of one mind to
get rid of Bulstrode.  Mr. Thesiger is turned against him, and wants
him out o' the parish.  And there's gentlemen in this town says they'd
as soon dine with a fellow from the hulks.  'And a deal sooner I
would,' says Fletcher; 'for what's more against one's stomach than a
man coming and making himself bad company with his religion, and giving
out as the Ten Commandments are not enough for him, and all the while
he's worse than half the men at the tread-mill?' Fletcher said so
himself."

"It'll be a bad thing for the town though, if Bulstrode's money goes
out of it," said Mr. Limp, quaveringly.

"Ah, there's better folks spend their money worse," said a firm-voiced
dyer, whose crimson hands looked out of keeping with his good-natured
face.

"But he won't keep his money, by what I can make out," said the
glazier.  "Don't they say as there's somebody can strip it off him?  By
what I can understan', they could take every penny off him, if they
went to lawing."

"No such thing!" said the barber, who felt himself a little above his
company at Dollop's, but liked it none the worse.  "Fletcher says it's
no such thing.  He says they might prove over and over again whose
child this young Ladislaw was, and they'd do no more than if they
proved I came out of the Fens--he couldn't touch a penny."

"Look you there now!" said Mrs. Dollop, indignantly.  "I thank the Lord
he took my children to Himself, if that's all the law can do for the
motherless.  Then by that, it's o' no use who your father and mother
is.  But as to listening to what one lawyer says without asking
another--I wonder at a man o' your cleverness, Mr. Dill.  It's well
known there's always two sides, if no more; else who'd go to law, I
should like to know?  It's a poor tale, with all the law as there is up
and down, if it's no use proving whose child you are.  Fletcher may say
that if he likes, but I say, don't Fletcher _me_!"

Mr. Dill affected to laugh in a complimentary way at Mrs. Dollop, as a
woman who was more than a match for the lawyers; being disposed to
submit to much twitting from a landlady who had a long score against
him.

"If they come to lawing, and it's all true as folks say, there's more
to be looked to nor money," said the glazier.  "There's this poor
creetur as is dead and gone; by what I can make out, he'd seen the day
when he was a deal finer gentleman nor Bulstrode."

"Finer gentleman!  I'll warrant him," said Mrs. Dollop; "and a far
personabler man, by what I can hear.  As I said when Mr. Baldwin, the
tax-gatherer, comes in, a-standing where you sit, and says, 'Bulstrode
got all his money as he brought into this town by thieving and
swindling,'--I said, 'You don't make me no wiser, Mr. Baldwin: it's set
my blood a-creeping to look at him ever sin' here he came into
Slaughter Lane a-wanting to buy the house over my head: folks don't
look the color o' the dough-tub and stare at you as if they wanted to
see into your backbone for nothingk.'  That was what I said, and Mr.
Baldwin can bear me witness."

"And in the rights of it too," said Mr. Crabbe.  "For by what I can
make out, this Raffles, as they call him, was a lusty, fresh-colored
man as you'd wish to see, and the best o' company--though dead he lies
in Lowick churchyard sure enough; and by what I can understan', there's
them knows more than they _should_ know about how he got there."

"I'll believe you!" said Mrs. Dallop, with a touch of scorn at Mr.
Crabbe's apparent dimness.  "When a man's been 'ticed to a lone house,
and there's them can pay for hospitals and nurses for half the
country-side choose to be sitters-up night and day, and nobody to come
near but a doctor as is known to stick at nothingk, and as poor as he
can hang together, and after that so flush o' money as he can pay off
Mr. Byles the butcher as his bill has been running on for the best o'
joints since last Michaelmas was a twelvemonth--I don't want anybody to
come and tell me as there's been more going on nor the Prayer-book's
got a service for--I don't want to stand winking and blinking and
thinking."

Mrs. Dollop looked round with the air of a landlady accustomed to
dominate her company.  There was a chorus of adhesion from the more
courageous; but Mr. Limp, after taking a draught, placed his flat hands
together and pressed them hard between his knees, looking down at them
with blear-eyed contemplation, as if the scorching power of Mrs.
Dollop's speech had quite dried up and nullified his wits until they
could be brought round again by further moisture.

"Why shouldn't they dig the man up and have the Crowner?" said the
dyer.  "It's been done many and many's the time.  If there's been foul
play they might find it out."

"Not they, Mr. Jonas!" said Mrs Dollop, emphatically.  "I know what
doctors are.  They're a deal too cunning to be found out.  And this
Doctor Lydgate that's been for cutting up everybody before the breath
was well out o' their body--it's plain enough what use he wanted to
make o' looking into respectable people's insides.  He knows drugs, you
may be sure, as you can neither smell nor see, neither before they're
swallowed nor after.  Why, I've seen drops myself ordered by Doctor
Gambit, as is our club doctor and a good charikter, and has brought
more live children into the world nor ever another i' Middlemarch--I
say I've seen drops myself as made no difference whether they was in
the glass or out, and yet have griped you the next day.  So I'll leave
your own sense to judge.  Don't tell me!  All I say is, it's a mercy
they didn't take this Doctor Lydgate on to our club.  There's many a
mother's child might ha' rued it."

The heads of this discussion at "Dollop's" had been the common theme
among all classes in the town, had been carried to Lowick Parsonage on
one side and to Tipton Grange on the other, had come fully to the ears
of the Vincy family, and had been discussed with sad reference to "poor
Harriet" by all Mrs. Bulstrode's friends, before Lydgate knew
distinctly why people were looking strangely at him, and before
Bulstrode himself suspected the betrayal of his secrets.  He had not
been accustomed to very cordial relations with his neighbors, and hence
he could not miss the signs of cordiality; moreover, he had been taking
journeys on business of various kinds, having now made up his mind that
he need not quit Middlemarch, and feeling able consequently to
determine on matters which he had before left in suspense.

"We will make a journey to Cheltenham in the course of a month or two,"
he had said to his wife.  "There are great spiritual advantages to be
had in that town along with the air and the waters, and six weeks there
will be eminently refreshing to us."

He really believed in the spiritual advantages, and meant that his life
henceforth should be the more devoted because of those later sins which
he represented to himself as hypothetic, praying hypothetically for
their pardon:--"if I have herein transgressed."

As to the Hospital, he avoided saying anything further to Lydgate,
fearing to manifest a too sudden change of plans immediately on the
death of Raffles.  In his secret soul he believed that Lydgate
suspected his orders to have been intentionally disobeyed, and
suspecting this he must also suspect a motive. But nothing had been
betrayed to him as to the history of Raffles, and Bulstrode was anxious
not to do anything which would give emphasis to his undefined
suspicions.  As to any certainty that a particular method of treatment
would either save or kill, Lydgate himself was constantly arguing
against such dogmatism; he had no right to speak, and he had every
motive for being silent.  Hence Bulstrode felt himself providentially
secured.  The only incident he had strongly winced under had been an
occasional encounter with Caleb Garth, who, however, had raised his hat
with mild gravity.

Meanwhile, on the part of the principal townsmen a strong determination
was growing against him.

A meeting was to be held in the Town-Hall on a sanitary question which
had risen into pressing importance by the occurrence of a cholera case
in the town.  Since the Act of Parliament, which had been hurriedly
passed, authorizing assessments for sanitary measures, there had been a
Board for the superintendence of such measures appointed in
Middlemarch, and much cleansing and preparation had been concurred in
by Whigs and Tories.  The question now was, whether a piece of ground
outside the town should be secured as a burial-ground by means of
assessment or by private subscription.  The meeting was to be open, and
almost everybody of importance in the town was expected to be there.

Mr. Bulstrode was a member of the Board, and just before twelve o'clock
he started from the Bank with the intention of urging the plan of
private subscription.  Under the hesitation of his projects, he had for
some time kept himself in the background, and he felt that he should
this morning resume his old position as a man of action and influence
in the public affairs of the town where he expected to end his days.
Among the various persons going in the same direction, he saw Lydgate;
they joined, talked over the object of the meeting, and entered it
together.

It seemed that everybody of mark had been earlier than they.  But there
were still spaces left near the head of the large central table, and
they made their way thither.  Mr. Farebrother sat opposite, not far
from Mr. Hawley; all the medical men were there; Mr. Thesiger was in
the chair, and Mr. Brooke of Tipton was on his right hand.

Lydgate noticed a peculiar interchange of glances when he and Bulstrode
took their seats.

After the business had been fully opened by the chairman, who pointed
out the advantages of purchasing by subscription a piece of ground
large enough to be ultimately used as a general cemetery, Mr.
Bulstrode, whose rather high-pitched but subdued and fluent voice the
town was used to at meetings of this sort, rose and asked leave to
deliver his opinion.  Lydgate could see again the peculiar interchange
of glances before Mr. Hawley started up, and said in his firm resonant
voice, "Mr. Chairman, I request that before any one delivers his
opinion on this point I may be permitted to speak on a question of
public feeling, which not only by myself, but by many gentlemen
present, is regarded as preliminary."

Mr. Hawley's mode of speech, even when public decorum repressed his
"awful language," was formidable in its curtness and self-possession.
Mr. Thesiger sanctioned the request, Mr. Bulstrode sat down, and Mr.
Hawley continued.

"In what I have to say, Mr. Chairman, I am not speaking simply on my
own behalf: I am speaking with the concurrence and at the express
request of no fewer than eight of my fellow-townsmen, who are
immediately around us.  It is our united sentiment that Mr. Bulstrode
should be called upon--and I do now call upon him--to resign public
positions which he holds not simply as a tax-payer, but as a gentleman
among gentlemen.  There are practices and there are acts which, owing
to circumstances, the law cannot visit, though they may be worse than
many things which are legally punishable.  Honest men and gentlemen, if
they don't want the company of people who perpetrate such acts, have
got to defend themselves as they best can, and that is what I and the
friends whom I may call my clients in this affair are determined to do.
I don't say that Mr. Bulstrode has been guilty of shameful acts, but I
call upon him either publicly to deny and confute the scandalous
statements made against him by a man now dead, and who died in his
house--the statement that he was for many years engaged in nefarious
practices, and that he won his fortune by dishonest procedures--or else
to withdraw from positions which could only have been allowed him as a
gentleman among gentlemen."

All eyes in the room were turned on Mr. Bulstrode, who, since the first
mention of his name, had been going through a crisis of feeling almost
too violent for his delicate frame to support.  Lydgate, who himself
was undergoing a shock as from the terrible practical interpretation of
some faint augury, felt, nevertheless, that his own movement of
resentful hatred was checked by that instinct of the Healer which
thinks first of bringing rescue or relief to the sufferer, when he
looked at the shrunken misery of Bulstrode's livid face.

The quick vision that his life was after all a failure, that he was a
dishonored man, and must quail before the glance of those towards whom
he had habitually assumed the attitude of a reprover--that God had
disowned him before men and left him unscreened to the triumphant scorn
of those who were glad to have their hatred justified--the sense of
utter futility in that equivocation with his conscience in dealing with
the life of his accomplice, an equivocation which now turned venomously
upon him with the full-grown fang of a discovered lie:--all this
rushed through him like the agony of terror which fails to kill, and
leaves the ears still open to the returning wave of execration.  The
sudden sense of exposure after the re-established sense of safety
came--not to the coarse organization of a criminal but to--the
susceptible nerve of a man whose intensest being lay in such mastery
and predominance as the conditions of his life had shaped for him.

But in that intense being lay the strength of reaction.  Through all
his bodily infirmity there ran a tenacious nerve of ambitious
self-preserving will, which had continually leaped out like a flame,
scattering all doctrinal fears, and which, even while he sat an object
of compassion for the merciful, was beginning to stir and glow under
his ashy paleness.  Before the last words were out of Mr. Hawley's
mouth, Bulstrode felt that he should answer, and that his answer would
be a retort.  He dared not get up and say, "I am not guilty, the whole
story is false"--even if he had dared this, it would have seemed to
him, under his present keen sense of betrayal, as vain as to pull, for
covering to his nakedness, a frail rag which would rend at every little
strain.

For a few moments there was total silence, while every man in the room
was looking at Bulstrode.  He sat perfectly still, leaning hard against
the back of his chair; he could not venture to rise, and when he began
to speak he pressed his hands upon the seat on each side of him.  But
his voice was perfectly audible, though hoarser than usual, and his
words were distinctly pronounced, though he paused between sentence as
if short of breath.  He said, turning first toward Mr. Thesiger, and
then looking at Mr. Hawley--

"I protest before you, sir, as a Christian minister, against the
sanction of proceedings towards me which are dictated by virulent
hatred.  Those who are hostile to me are glad to believe any libel
uttered by a loose tongue against me.  And their consciences become
strict against me.  Say that the evil-speaking of which I am to be made
the victim accuses me of malpractices--" here Bulstrode's voice rose
and took on a more biting accent, till it seemed a low cry--"who shall
be my accuser?  Not men whose own lives are unchristian, nay,
scandalous--not men who themselves use low instruments to carry out
their ends--whose profession is a tissue of chicanery--who have been
spending their income on their own sensual enjoyments, while I have
been devoting mine to advance the best objects with regard to this life
and the next."

After the word chicanery there was a growing noise, half of murmurs and
half of hisses, while four persons started up at once--Mr. Hawley, Mr.
Toller, Mr. Chichely, and Mr. Hackbutt; but Mr. Hawley's outburst was
instantaneous, and left the others behind in silence.

"If you mean me, sir, I call you and every one else to the inspection
of my professional life.  As to Christian or unchristian, I repudiate
your canting palavering Christianity; and as to the way in which I
spend my income, it is not my principle to maintain thieves and cheat
offspring of their due inheritance in order to support religion and set
myself up as a saintly Killjoy.  I affect no niceness of conscience--I
have not found any nice standards necessary yet to measure your actions
by, sir.  And I again call upon you to enter into satisfactory
explanations concerning the scandals against you, or else to withdraw
from posts in which we at any rate decline you as a colleague.  I say,
sir, we decline to co-operate with a man whose character is not cleared
from infamous lights cast upon it, not only by reports but by recent
actions."

"Allow me, Mr. Hawley," said the chairman; and Mr. Hawley, still
fuming, bowed half impatiently, and sat down with his hands thrust deep
in his pockets.

"Mr. Bulstrode, it is not desirable, I think, to prolong the present
discussion," said Mr. Thesiger, turning to the pallid trembling man; "I
must so far concur with what has fallen from Mr. Hawley in expression
of a general feeling, as to think it due to your Christian profession
that you should clear yourself, if possible, from unhappy aspersions.
I for my part should be willing to give you full opportunity and
hearing.  But I must say that your present attitude is painfully
inconsistent with those principles which you have sought to identify
yourself with, and for the honor of which I am bound to care.  I
recommend you at present, as your clergyman, and one who hopes for your
reinstatement in respect, to quit the room, and avoid further hindrance
to business."

Bulstrode, after a moment's hesitation, took his hat from the floor and
slowly rose, but he grasped the corner of the chair so totteringly that
Lydgate felt sure there was not strength enough in him to walk away
without support.  What could he do?  He could not see a man sink close
to him for want of help.  He rose and gave his arm to Bulstrode, and in
that way led him out of the room; yet this act, which might have been
one of gentle duty and pure compassion, was at this moment unspeakably
bitter to him.  It seemed as if he were putting his sign-manual to that
association of himself with Bulstrode, of which he now saw the full
meaning as it must have presented itself to other minds.  He now felt
the conviction that this man who was leaning tremblingly on his arm,
had given him the thousand pounds as a bribe, and that somehow the
treatment of Raffles had been tampered with from an evil motive.  The
inferences were closely linked enough; the town knew of the loan,
believed it to be a bribe, and believed that he took it as a bribe.

Poor Lydgate, his mind struggling under the terrible clutch of this
revelation, was all the while morally forced to take Mr. Bulstrode to
the Bank, send a man off for his carriage, and wait to accompany him
home.

Meanwhile the business of the meeting was despatched, and fringed off
into eager discussion among various groups concerning this affair of
Bulstrode--and Lydgate.

Mr. Brooke, who had before heard only imperfect hints of it, and was
very uneasy that he had "gone a little too far" in countenancing
Bulstrode, now got himself fully informed, and felt some benevolent
sadness in talking to Mr. Farebrother about the ugly light in which
Lydgate had come to be regarded.  Mr. Farebrother was going to walk
back to Lowick.

"Step into my carriage," said Mr. Brooke.  "I am going round to see
Mrs. Casaubon.  She was to come back from Yorkshire last night.  She
will like to see me, you know."

So they drove along, Mr. Brooke chatting with good-natured hope that
there had not really been anything black in Lydgate's behavior--a
young fellow whom he had seen to be quite above the common mark, when
he brought a letter from his uncle Sir Godwin.  Mr. Farebrother said
little: he was deeply mournful: with a keen perception of human
weakness, he could not be confident that under the pressure of
humiliating needs Lydgate had not fallen below himself.

When the carriage drove up to the gate of the Manor, Dorothea was out
on the gravel, and came to greet them.

"Well, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, "we have just come from a meeting--a
sanitary meeting, you know."

"Was Mr. Lydgate there?" said Dorothea, who looked full of health and
animation, and stood with her head bare under the gleaming April
lights.  "I want to see him and have a great consultation with him
about the Hospital.  I have engaged with Mr. Bulstrode to do so."

"Oh, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, "we have been hearing bad news--bad
news, you know."

They walked through the garden towards the churchyard gate, Mr.
Farebrother wanting to go on to the parsonage; and Dorothea heard the
whole sad story.

She listened with deep interest, and begged to hear twice over the
facts and impressions concerning Lydgate.  After a short silence,
pausing at the churchyard gate, and addressing Mr. Farebrother, she
said energetically--

"You don't believe that Mr. Lydgate is guilty of anything base?  I will
not believe it.  Let us find out the truth and clear him!"

BOOK VIII.

SUNSET AND SUNRISE.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Mr. Bambridge and various other Middlemarch men are hanging out at the Green Dragon, gossiping. Bambridge tells the listeners that he'd had a drink or five with a guy named Raffles who had said that he knew all of Bulstrode's secrets and bragged that he could put him in jail if he liked. But Hopkins knows that a man named Raffles was just buried in Middlemarch, and that Bulstrode paid for the funeral. They're all rather shocked about this. Hopkins tells them that Lydgate was the only doctor who saw the man before he died, and that Bulstrode had sat up with him for two nights at Stone Court before he died. The gossip spreads around Middlemarch like wildfire. It's a good thing that most people don't know that Bulstrode gave Lydgate a huge loan the day before Raffles died, or he'd be suspected, too. But then Mrs. Bulstrode mentions it to her friend Mrs. Plymdale, who mentions it to her friend Mrs. Toller...and then finally that piece of the gossip gets spread around, too. No one can prove anything against either Bulstrode or Lydgate, of course, but the whole thing has "an ugly look," to quote most Middlemarchers. All the townspeople are enjoying having a scandal to gossip about. A meeting of the Board of Trustees of the hospital is called. Lydgate is there, too, as the chief medical man at the hospital. The board asks Bulstrode to step down because of the scandal. And Lydgate realizes that the town believes that he took a bribe from Bulstrode. After the meeting, Farebrother runs into Mr. Brooke, who tells him that Dorothea would like to meet with him. They tell Dorothea about the scandal with Bulstrode, and that Lydgate is implicated in it, too. Part of the gossip about Bulstrode involves Will Ladislaw's family. The fact that he's descended from a Polish musician on one side, and a thieving pawnbroker on the other doesn't do anything for his reputation amongst her friends and family. She immediately is determined to clear Lydgate's name - she refuses to believe that he knew anything about it.


prompt:
Chapter: Full souls are double mirrors, making still
    An endless vista of fair things before,
    Repeating things behind.

Dorothea's impetuous generosity, which would have leaped at once to the
vindication of Lydgate from the suspicion of having accepted money as a
bribe, underwent a melancholy check when she came to consider all the
circumstances of the case by the light of Mr. Farebrother's experience.

"It is a delicate matter to touch," he said.  "How can we begin to
inquire into it?  It must be either publicly by setting the magistrate
and coroner to work, or privately by questioning Lydgate.  As to the
first proceeding there is no solid ground to go upon, else Hawley would
have adopted it; and as to opening the subject with Lydgate, I confess
I should shrink from it.  He would probably take it as a deadly insult.
I have more than once experienced the difficulty of speaking to him on
personal matters.  And--one should know the truth about his conduct
beforehand, to feel very confident of a good result."

"I feel convinced that his conduct has not been guilty: I believe that
people are almost always better than their neighbors think they are,"
said Dorothea.  Some of her intensest experience in the last two years
had set her mind strongly in opposition to any unfavorable construction
of others; and for the first time she felt rather discontented with Mr.
Farebrother.  She disliked this cautious weighing of consequences,
instead of an ardent faith in efforts of justice and mercy, which would
conquer by their emotional force.  Two days afterwards, he was dining
at the Manor with her uncle and the Chettams, and when the dessert was
standing uneaten, the servants were out of the room, and Mr. Brooke was
nodding in a nap, she returned to the subject with renewed vivacity.

"Mr. Lydgate would understand that if his friends hear a calumny about
him their first wish must be to justify him.  What do we live for, if
it is not to make life less difficult to each other?  I cannot be
indifferent to the troubles of a man who advised me in _my_ trouble,
and attended me in my illness."

Dorothea's tone and manner were not more energetic than they had been
when she was at the head of her uncle's table nearly three years
before, and her experience since had given her more right to express a
decided opinion.  But Sir James Chettam was no longer the diffident and
acquiescent suitor: he was the anxious brother-in-law, with a devout
admiration for his sister, but with a constant alarm lest she should
fall under some new illusion almost as bad as marrying Casaubon.  He
smiled much less; when he said "Exactly" it was more often an
introduction to a dissentient opinion than in those submissive bachelor
days; and Dorothea found to her surprise that she had to resolve not to
be afraid of him--all the more because he was really her best friend.
He disagreed with her now.

"But, Dorothea," he said, remonstrantly, "you can't undertake to manage
a man's life for him in that way.  Lydgate must know--at least he will
soon come to know how he stands.  If he can clear himself, he will.  He
must act for himself."

"I think his friends must wait till they find an opportunity," added
Mr. Farebrother.  "It is possible--I have often felt so much weakness
in myself that I can conceive even a man of honorable disposition, such
as I have always believed Lydgate to be, succumbing to such a
temptation as that of accepting money which was offered more or less
indirectly as a bribe to insure his silence about scandalous facts long
gone by.  I say, I can conceive this, if he were under the pressure of
hard circumstances--if he had been harassed as I feel sure Lydgate has
been.  I would not believe anything worse of him except under stringent
proof.  But there is the terrible Nemesis following on some errors,
that it is always possible for those who like it to interpret them into
a crime: there is no proof in favor of the man outside his own
consciousness and assertion."

"Oh, how cruel!" said Dorothea, clasping her hands.  "And would you not
like to be the one person who believed in that man's innocence, if the
rest of the world belied him?  Besides, there is a man's character
beforehand to speak for him."

"But, my dear Mrs. Casaubon," said Mr. Farebrother, smiling gently at
her ardor, "character is not cut in marble--it is not something solid
and unalterable.  It is something living and changing, and may become
diseased as our bodies do."

"Then it may be rescued and healed," said Dorothea "I should not be
afraid of asking Mr. Lydgate to tell me the truth, that I might help
him.  Why should I be afraid?  Now that I am not to have the land,
James, I might do as Mr. Bulstrode proposed, and take his place in
providing for the Hospital; and I have to consult Mr. Lydgate, to know
thoroughly what are the prospects of doing good by keeping up the
present plans.  There is the best opportunity in the world for me to
ask for his confidence; and he would be able to tell me things which
might make all the circumstances clear.  Then we would all stand by him
and bring him out of his trouble.  People glorify all sorts of bravery
except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest
neighbors."  Dorothea's eyes had a moist brightness in them, and the
changed tones of her voice roused her uncle, who began to listen.

"It is true that a woman may venture on some efforts of sympathy which
would hardly succeed if we men undertook them," said Mr. Farebrother,
almost converted by Dorothea's ardor.

"Surely, a woman is bound to be cautious and listen to those who know
the world better than she does."  said Sir James, with his little
frown.  "Whatever you do in the end, Dorothea, you should really keep
back at present, and not volunteer any meddling with this Bulstrode
business.  We don't know yet what may turn up.  You must agree with
me?" he ended, looking at Mr. Farebrother.

"I do think it would be better to wait," said the latter.

"Yes, yes, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, not quite knowing at what point
the discussion had arrived, but coming up to it with a contribution
which was generally appropriate.  "It is easy to go too far, you know.
You must not let your ideas run away with you.  And as to being in a
hurry to put money into schemes--it won't do, you know.  Garth has
drawn me in uncommonly with repairs, draining, that sort of thing: I'm
uncommonly out of pocket with one thing or another.  I must pull up.
As for you, Chettam, you are spending a fortune on those oak fences
round your demesne."

Dorothea, submitting uneasily to this discouragement, went with Celia
into the library, which was her usual drawing-room.

"Now, Dodo, do listen to what James says," said Celia, "else you will
be getting into a scrape.  You always did, and you always will, when
you set about doing as you please.  And I think it is a mercy now after
all that you have got James to think for you.  He lets you have your
plans, only he hinders you from being taken in.  And that is the good
of having a brother instead of a husband.  A husband would not let you
have your plans."

"As if I wanted a husband!" said Dorothea.  "I only want not to have my
feelings checked at every turn."  Mrs. Casaubon was still undisciplined
enough to burst into angry tears.

"Now, really, Dodo," said Celia, with rather a deeper guttural than
usual, "you _are_ contradictory: first one thing and then another.  You
used to submit to Mr. Casaubon quite shamefully: I think you would have
given up ever coming to see me if he had asked you."

"Of course I submitted to him, because it was my duty; it was my
feeling for him," said Dorothea, looking through the prism of her tears.

"Then why can't you think it your duty to submit a little to what James
wishes?" said Celia, with a sense of stringency in her argument.
"Because he only wishes what is for your own good.  And, of course, men
know best about everything, except what women know better." Dorothea
laughed and forgot her tears.

"Well, I mean about babies and those things," explained Celia.  "I
should not give up to James when I knew he was wrong, as you used to do
to Mr. Casaubon."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Dorothea is inclined to believe the best of everybody, of course. Mr. Farebrother agrees with her, but doesn't know how they can go about vindicating Lydgate without asking him directly, and he would take that as an insult. Dorothea isn't afraid of that, though. She has a feeling that Lydgate wouldn't mind her sympathy and support. But Mr. Farebrother, Sir James, Mr. Brooke, and even Celia all tell her to wait and see.


prompt:
Chapter: Pity the laden one; this wandering woe
    May visit you and me.

When Lydgate had allayed Mrs. Bulstrode's anxiety by telling her that
her husband had been seized with faintness at the meeting, but that he
trusted soon to see him better and would call again the next day,
unless she sent for him earlier, he went directly home, got on his
horse, and rode three miles out of the town for the sake of being out
of reach.

He felt himself becoming violent and unreasonable as if raging under
the pain of stings: he was ready to curse the day on which he had come
to Middlemarch.  Everything that bad happened to him there seemed a
mere preparation for this hateful fatality, which had come as a blight
on his honorable ambition, and must make even people who had only
vulgar standards regard his reputation as irrevocably damaged.  In such
moments a man can hardly escape being unloving.  Lydgate thought of
himself as the sufferer, and of others as the agents who had injured
his lot.  He had meant everything to turn out differently; and others
had thrust themselves into his life and thwarted his purposes.  His
marriage seemed an unmitigated calamity; and he was afraid of going to
Rosamond before he had vented himself in this solitary rage, lest the
mere sight of her should exasperate him and make him behave
unwarrantably.  There are episodes in most men's lives in which their
highest qualities can only cast a deterring shadow over the objects
that fill their inward vision: Lydgate's tenderheartedness was present
just then only as a dread lest he should offend against it, not as an
emotion that swayed him to tenderness.  For he was very miserable.
Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life--the life
which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it--can
understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into
the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.

How was he to live on without vindicating himself among people who
suspected him of baseness?  How could he go silently away from
Middlemarch as if he were retreating before a just condemnation?  And
yet how was he to set about vindicating himself?

For that scene at the meeting, which he had just witnessed, although it
had told him no particulars, had been enough to make his own situation
thoroughly clear to him.  Bulstrode had been in dread of scandalous
disclosures on the part of Raffles.  Lydgate could now construct all
the probabilities of the case.  "He was afraid of some betrayal in my
hearing: all he wanted was to bind me to him by a strong obligation:
that was why he passed on a sudden from hardness to liberality.  And he
may have tampered with the patient--he may have disobeyed my orders.  I
fear he did.  But whether he did or not, the world believes that he
somehow or other poisoned the man and that I winked at the crime, if I
didn't help in it.  And yet--and yet he may not be guilty of the last
offence; and it is just possible that the change towards me may have
been a genuine relenting--the effect of second thoughts such as he
alleged.  What we call the 'just possible' is sometimes true and the
thing we find it easier to believe is grossly false.  In his last
dealings with this man Bulstrode may have kept his hands pure, in spite
of my suspicion to the contrary."

There was a benumbing cruelty in his position.  Even if he renounced
every other consideration than that of justifying himself--if he met
shrugs, cold glances, and avoidance as an accusation, and made a public
statement of all the facts as he knew them, who would be convinced?  It
would be playing the part of a fool to offer his own testimony on
behalf of himself, and say, "I did not take the money as a bribe."  The
circumstances would always be stronger than his assertion.  And
besides, to come forward and tell everything about himself must include
declarations about Bulstrode which would darken the suspicions of
others against him.  He must tell that he had not known of Raffles's
existence when he first mentioned his pressing need of money to
Bulstrode, and that he took the money innocently as a result of that
communication, not knowing that a new motive for the loan might have
arisen on his being called in to this man.  And after all, the
suspicion of Bulstrode's motives might be unjust.

But then came the question whether he should have acted in precisely
the same way if he had not taken the money?  Certainly, if Raffles had
continued alive and susceptible of further treatment when he arrived,
and he had then imagined any disobedience to his orders on the part of
Bulstrode, he would have made a strict inquiry, and if his conjecture
had been verified he would have thrown up the case, in spite of his
recent heavy obligation.  But if he had not received any money--if
Bulstrode had never revoked his cold recommendation of bankruptcy--would
he, Lydgate, have abstained from all inquiry even on finding the
man dead?--would the shrinking from an insult to Bulstrode--would the
dubiousness of all medical treatment and the argument that his own
treatment would pass for the wrong with most members of his
profession--have had just the same force or significance with him?

That was the uneasy corner of Lydgate's consciousness while he was
reviewing the facts and resisting all reproach.  If he had been
independent, this matter of a patient's treatment and the distinct rule
that he must do or see done that which he believed best for the life
committed to him, would have been the point on which he would have been
the sturdiest.  As it was, he had rested in the consideration that
disobedience to his orders, however it might have arisen, could not be
considered a crime, that in the dominant opinion obedience to his
orders was just as likely to be fatal, and that the affair was simply
one of etiquette.  Whereas, again and again, in his time of freedom, he
had denounced the perversion of pathological doubt into moral doubt and
had said--"the purest experiment in treatment may still be
conscientious: my business is to take care of life, and to do the best
I can think of for it.  Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma.
Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a
contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive." Alas! the
scientific conscience had got into the debasing company of money
obligation and selfish respects.

"Is there a medical man of them all in Middlemarch who would question
himself as I do?" said poor Lydgate, with a renewed outburst of
rebellion against the oppression of his lot.  "And yet they will all
feel warranted in making a wide space between me and them, as if I were
a leper!  My practice and my reputation are utterly damned--I can see
that.  Even if I could be cleared by valid evidence, it would make
little difference to the blessed world here.  I have been set down as
tainted and should be cheapened to them all the same."

Already there had been abundant signs which had hitherto puzzled him,
that just when he had been paying off his debts and getting cheerfully
on his feet, the townsmen were avoiding him or looking strangely at
him, and in two instances it came to his knowledge that patients of his
had called in another practitioner.  The reasons were too plain now.
The general black-balling had begun.

No wonder that in Lydgate's energetic nature the sense of a hopeless
misconstruction easily turned into a dogged resistance.  The scowl
which occasionally showed itself on his square brow was not a
meaningless accident.  Already when he was re-entering the town after
that ride taken in the first hours of stinging pain, he was setting his
mind on remaining in Middlemarch in spite of the worst that could be
done against him.  He would not retreat before calumny, as if he
submitted to it.  He would face it to the utmost, and no act of his
should show that he was afraid.  It belonged to the generosity as well
as defiant force of his nature that he resolved not to shrink from
showing to the full his sense of obligation to Bulstrode.  It was true
that the association with this man had been fatal to him--true that if
he had had the thousand pounds still in his hands with all his debts
unpaid he would have returned the money to Bulstrode, and taken beggary
rather than the rescue which had been sullied with the suspicion of a
bribe (for, remember, he was one of the proudest among the sons of
men)--nevertheless, he would not turn away from this crushed
fellow-mortal whose aid he had used, and make a pitiful effort to get
acquittal for himself by howling against another.  "I shall do as I
think right, and explain to nobody.  They will try to starve me out,
but--" he was going on with an obstinate resolve, but he was getting
near home, and the thought of Rosamond urged itself again into that
chief place from which it had been thrust by the agonized struggles of
wounded honor and pride.

How would Rosamond take it all?  Here was another weight of chain to
drag, and poor Lydgate was in a bad mood for bearing her dumb mastery.
He had no impulse to tell her the trouble which must soon be common to
them both.  He preferred waiting for the incidental disclosure which
events must soon bring about.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Lydgate is miserable again. He doesn't know how to vindicate himself. But he also has to ask himself whether he would have asked more questions about Raffles's death if he hadn't just gotten a huge loan from Bulstrode. He considers returning the money to Bulstrode, but how can he, when it would mean going deep into debt again? What would Rosamond say?


prompt:
Chapter: "Mercifully grant that we may grow aged together."
                             --BOOK OF TOBIT: Marriage Prayer.

In Middlemarch a wife could not long remain ignorant that the town held
a bad opinion of her husband.  No feminine intimate might carry her
friendship so far as to make a plain statement to the wife of the
unpleasant fact known or believed about her husband; but when a woman
with her thoughts much at leisure got them suddenly employed on
something grievously disadvantageous to her neighbors, various moral
impulses were called into play which tended to stimulate utterance.
Candor was one.  To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to
use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not
take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their
position; and a robust candor never waited to be asked for its opinion.
Then, again, there was the love of truth--a wide phrase, but meaning in
this relation, a lively objection to seeing a wife look happier than
her husband's character warranted, or manifest too much satisfaction in
her lot--the poor thing should have some hint given her that if she
knew the truth she would have less complacency in her bonnet, and in
light dishes for a supper-party. Stronger than all, there was the
regard for a friend's moral improvement, sometimes called her soul,
which was likely to be benefited by remarks tending to gloom, uttered
with the accompaniment of pensive staring at the furniture and a manner
implying that the speaker would not tell what was on her mind, from
regard to the feelings of her hearer.  On the whole, one might say that
an ardent charity was at work setting the virtuous mind to make a
neighbor unhappy for her good.

There were hardly any wives in Middlemarch whose matrimonial
misfortunes would in different ways be likely to call forth more of
this moral activity than Rosamond and her aunt Bulstrode.  Mrs.
Bulstrode was not an object of dislike, and had never consciously
injured any human being.  Men had always thought her a handsome
comfortable woman, and had reckoned it among the signs of Bulstrode's
hypocrisy that he had chosen a red-blooded Vincy, instead of a ghastly
and melancholy person suited to his low esteem for earthly pleasure.
When the scandal about her husband was disclosed they remarked of
her--"Ah, poor woman!  She's as honest as the day--_she_ never
suspected anything wrong in him, you may depend on it."  Women, who
were intimate with her, talked together much of "poor Harriet,"
imagined what her feelings must be when she came to know everything,
and conjectured how much she had already come to know.  There was no
spiteful disposition towards her; rather, there was a busy benevolence
anxious to ascertain what it would be well for her to feel and do under
the circumstances, which of course kept the imagination occupied with
her character and history from the times when she was Harriet Vincy
till now.  With the review of Mrs. Bulstrode and her position it was
inevitable to associate Rosamond, whose prospects were under the same
blight with her aunt's. Rosamond was more severely criticised and less
pitied, though she too, as one of the good old Vincy family who had
always been known in Middlemarch, was regarded as a victim to marriage
with an interloper.  The Vincys had their weaknesses, but then they lay
on the surface: there was never anything bad to be "found out"
concerning them.  Mrs. Bulstrode was vindicated from any resemblance to
her husband.  Harriet's faults were her own.

"She has always been showy," said Mrs. Hackbutt, making tea for a small
party, "though she has got into the way of putting her religion
forward, to conform to her husband; she has tried to hold her head up
above Middlemarch by making it known that she invites clergymen and
heaven-knows-who from Riverston and those places."

"We can hardly blame her for that," said Mrs. Sprague; "because few of
the best people in the town cared to associate with Bulstrode, and she
must have somebody to sit down at her table."

"Mr. Thesiger has always countenanced him," said Mrs. Hackbutt.  "I
think he must be sorry now."

"But he was never fond of him in his heart--that every one knows," said
Mrs. Tom Toller.  "Mr. Thesiger never goes into extremes.  He keeps to
the truth in what is evangelical.  It is only clergymen like Mr. Tyke,
who want to use Dissenting hymn-books and that low kind of religion,
who ever found Bulstrode to their taste."

"I understand, Mr. Tyke is in great distress about him," said Mrs.
Hackbutt.  "And well he may be: they say the Bulstrodes have half kept
the Tyke family."

"And of course it is a discredit to his doctrines," said Mrs. Sprague,
who was elderly, and old-fashioned in her opinions.

"People will not make a boast of being methodistical in Middlemarch for
a good while to come."

"I think we must not set down people's bad actions to their religion,"
said falcon-faced Mrs. Plymdale, who had been listening hitherto.

"Oh, my dear, we are forgetting," said Mrs. Sprague.  "We ought not to
be talking of this before you."

"I am sure I have no reason to be partial," said Mrs. Plymdale,
coloring.  "It's true Mr. Plymdale has always been on good terms with
Mr. Bulstrode, and Harriet Vincy was my friend long before she married
him.  But I have always kept my own opinions and told her where she was
wrong, poor thing.  Still, in point of religion, I must say, Mr.
Bulstrode might have done what he has, and worse, and yet have been a
man of no religion.  I don't say that there has not been a little too
much of that--I like moderation myself.  But truth is truth.  The men
tried at the assizes are not all over-religious, I suppose."

"Well," said Mrs. Hackbutt, wheeling adroitly, "all I can say is, that
I think she ought to separate from him."

"I can't say that," said Mrs. Sprague.  "She took him for better or
worse, you know."

"But 'worse' can never mean finding out that your husband is fit for
Newgate," said Mrs. Hackbutt.  "Fancy living with such a man!  I should
expect to be poisoned."

"Yes, I think myself it is an encouragement to crime if such men are to
be taken care of and waited on by good wives," said Mrs. Tom Toller.

"And a good wife poor Harriet has been," said Mrs. Plymdale.  "She
thinks her husband the first of men.  It's true he has never denied her
anything."

"Well, we shall see what she will do," said Mrs. Hackbutt.  "I suppose
she knows nothing yet, poor creature.  I do hope and trust I shall not
see her, for I should be frightened to death lest I should say anything
about her husband.  Do you think any hint has reached her?"

"I should hardly think so," said Mrs. Tom Toller.  "We hear that he is
ill, and has never stirred out of the house since the meeting on
Thursday; but she was with her girls at church yesterday, and they had
new Tuscan bonnets.  Her own had a feather in it.  I have never seen
that her religion made any difference in her dress."

"She wears very neat patterns always," said Mrs. Plymdale, a little
stung.  "And that feather I know she got dyed a pale lavender on
purpose to be consistent.  I must say it of Harriet that she wishes to
do right."

"As to her knowing what has happened, it can't be kept from her long,"
said Mrs. Hackbutt.  "The Vincys know, for Mr. Vincy was at the
meeting.  It will be a great blow to him.  There is his daughter as
well as his sister."

"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Sprague.  "Nobody supposes that Mr. Lydgate
can go on holding up his head in Middlemarch, things look so black
about the thousand pounds he took just at that man's death.  It really
makes one shudder."

"Pride must have a fall," said Mrs. Hackbutt.

"I am not so sorry for Rosamond Vincy that was as I am for her aunt,"
said Mrs. Plymdale.  "She needed a lesson."

"I suppose the Bulstrodes will go and live abroad somewhere," said Mrs.
Sprague.  "That is what is generally done when there is anything
disgraceful in a family."

"And a most deadly blow it will be to Harriet," said Mrs. Plymdale.
"If ever a woman was crushed, she will be.  I pity her from my heart.
And with all her faults, few women are better.  From a girl she had the
neatest ways, and was always good-hearted, and as open as the day.  You
might look into her drawers when you would--always the same.  And so
she has brought up Kate and Ellen.  You may think how hard it will be
for her to go among foreigners."

"The doctor says that is what he should recommend the Lydgates to do,"
said Mrs. Sprague.  "He says Lydgate ought to have kept among the
French."

"That would suit _her_ well enough, I dare say," said Mrs. Plymdale;
"there is that kind of lightness about her.  But she got that from her
mother; she never got it from her aunt Bulstrode, who always gave her
good advice, and to my knowledge would rather have had her marry
elsewhere."

Mrs. Plymdale was in a situation which caused her some complication of
feeling.  There had been not only her intimacy with Mrs. Bulstrode, but
also a profitable business relation of the great Plymdale dyeing house
with Mr. Bulstrode, which on the one hand would have inclined her to
desire that the mildest view of his character should be the true one,
but on the other, made her the more afraid of seeming to palliate his
culpability.  Again, the late alliance of her family with the Tollers
had brought her in connection with the best circle, which gratified her
in every direction except in the inclination to those serious views
which she believed to be the best in another sense.  The sharp little
woman's conscience was somewhat troubled in the adjustment of these
opposing "bests," and of her griefs and satisfactions under late
events, which were likely to humble those who needed humbling, but also
to fall heavily on her old friend whose faults she would have preferred
seeing on a background of prosperity.

Poor Mrs. Bulstrode, meanwhile, had been no further shaken by the
oncoming tread of calamity than in the busier stirring of that secret
uneasiness which had always been present in her since the last visit of
Raffles to The Shrubs.  That the hateful man had come ill to Stone
Court, and that her husband had chosen to remain there and watch over
him, she allowed to be explained by the fact that Raffles had been
employed and aided in earlier-days, and that this made a tie of
benevolence towards him in his degraded helplessness; and she had been
since then innocently cheered by her husband's more hopeful speech
about his own health and ability to continue his attention to business.
The calm was disturbed when Lydgate had brought him home ill from the
meeting, and in spite of comforting assurances during the next few
days, she cried in private from the conviction that her husband was not
suffering from bodily illness merely, but from something that afflicted
his mind.  He would not allow her to read to him, and scarcely to sit
with him, alleging nervous susceptibility to sounds and movements; yet
she suspected that in shutting himself up in his private room he wanted
to be busy with his papers.  Something, she felt sure, had happened.
Perhaps it was some great loss of money; and she was kept in the dark.
Not daring to question her husband, she said to Lydgate, on the fifth
day after the meeting, when she had not left home except to go to
church--

"Mr. Lydgate, pray be open with me: I like to know the truth.  Has
anything happened to Mr. Bulstrode?"

"Some little nervous shock," said Lydgate, evasively.  He felt that it
was not for him to make the painful revelation.

"But what brought it on?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, looking directly at him
with her large dark eyes.

"There is often something poisonous in the air of public rooms," said
Lydgate.  "Strong men can stand it, but it tells on people in
proportion to the delicacy of their systems.  It is often impossible to
account for the precise moment of an attack--or rather, to say why the
strength gives way at a particular moment."

Mrs. Bulstrode was not satisfied with this answer.  There remained in
her the belief that some calamity had befallen her husband, of which
she was to be kept in ignorance; and it was in her nature strongly to
object to such concealment.  She begged leave for her daughters to sit
with their father, and drove into the town to pay some visits,
conjecturing that if anything were known to have gone wrong in Mr.
Bulstrode's affairs, she should see or hear some sign of it.

She called on Mrs. Thesiger, who was not at home, and then drove to
Mrs. Hackbutt's on the other side of the churchyard.  Mrs. Hackbutt saw
her coming from an up-stairs window, and remembering her former alarm
lest she should meet Mrs. Bulstrode, felt almost bound in consistency
to send word that she was not at home; but against that, there was a
sudden strong desire within her for the excitement of an interview in
which she was quite determined not to make the slightest allusion to
what was in her mind.

Hence Mrs. Bulstrode was shown into the drawing-room, and Mrs. Hackbutt
went to her, with more tightness of lip and rubbing of her hands than
was usually observable in her, these being precautions adopted against
freedom of speech.  She was resolved not to ask how Mr. Bulstrode was.

"I have not been anywhere except to church for nearly a week," said
Mrs. Bulstrode, after a few introductory remarks.  "But Mr. Bulstrode
was taken so ill at the meeting on Thursday that I have not liked to
leave the house."

Mrs. Hackbutt rubbed the back of one hand with the palm of the other
held against her chest, and let her eyes ramble over the pattern on the
rug.

"Was Mr. Hackbutt at the meeting?" persevered Mrs. Bulstrode.

"Yes, he was," said Mrs. Hackbutt, with the same attitude.  "The land
is to be bought by subscription, I believe."

"Let us hope that there will be no more cases of cholera to be buried
in it," said Mrs. Bulstrode.  "It is an awful visitation.  But I always
think Middlemarch a very healthy spot.  I suppose it is being used to
it from a child; but I never saw the town I should like to live at
better, and especially our end."

"I am sure I should be glad that you always should live at Middlemarch,
Mrs. Bulstrode," said Mrs. Hackbutt, with a slight sigh.  "Still, we
must learn to resign ourselves, wherever our lot may be cast.  Though I
am sure there will always be people in this town who will wish you
well."

Mrs. Hackbutt longed to say, "if you take my advice you will part from
your husband," but it seemed clear to her that the poor woman knew
nothing of the thunder ready to bolt on her head, and she herself could
do no more than prepare her a little.  Mrs. Bulstrode felt suddenly
rather chill and trembling: there was evidently something unusual
behind this speech of Mrs. Hackbutt's; but though she had set out with
the desire to be fully informed, she found herself unable now to pursue
her brave purpose, and turning the conversation by an inquiry about the
young Hackbutts, she soon took her leave saying that she was going to
see Mrs. Plymdale.  On her way thither she tried to imagine that there
might have been some unusually warm sparring at the meeting between Mr.
Bulstrode and some of his frequent opponents--perhaps Mr. Hackbutt
might have been one of them.  That would account for everything.

But when she was in conversation with Mrs. Plymdale that comforting
explanation seemed no longer tenable.  "Selina" received her with a
pathetic affectionateness and a disposition to give edifying answers on
the commonest topics, which could hardly have reference to an ordinary
quarrel of which the most important consequence was a perturbation of
Mr. Bulstrode's health.  Beforehand Mrs. Bulstrode had thought that she
would sooner question Mrs. Plymdale than any one else; but she found to
her surprise that an old friend is not always the person whom it is
easiest to make a confidant of: there was the barrier of remembered
communication under other circumstances--there was the dislike of
being pitied and informed by one who had been long wont to allow her
the superiority.  For certain words of mysterious appropriateness that
Mrs. Plymdale let fall about her resolution never to turn her back on
her friends, convinced Mrs. Bulstrode that what had happened must be
some kind of misfortune, and instead of being able to say with her
native directness, "What is it that you have in your mind?" she found
herself anxious to get away before she had heard anything more
explicit.  She began to have an agitating certainty that the misfortune
was something more than the mere loss of money, being keenly sensitive
to the fact that Selina now, just as Mrs. Hackbutt had done before,
avoided noticing what she said about her husband, as they would have
avoided noticing a personal blemish.

She said good-by with nervous haste, and told the coachman to drive to
Mr. Vincy's warehouse.  In that short drive her dread gathered so much
force from the sense of darkness, that when she entered the private
counting-house where her brother sat at his desk, her knees trembled
and her usually florid face was deathly pale.  Something of the same
effect was produced in him by the sight of her: he rose from his seat
to meet her, took her by the hand, and said, with his impulsive
rashness--

"God help you, Harriet! you know all."

That moment was perhaps worse than any which came after.  It contained
that concentrated experience which in great crises of emotion reveals
the bias of a nature, and is prophetic of the ultimate act which will
end an intermediate struggle.  Without that memory of Raffles she might
still have thought only of monetary ruin, but now along with her
brother's look and words there darted into her mind the idea of some
guilt in her husband--then, under the working of terror came the image
of her husband exposed to disgrace--and then, after an instant of
scorching shame in which she felt only the eyes of the world, with one
leap of her heart she was at his side in mournful but unreproaching
fellowship with shame and isolation.  All this went on within her in a
mere flash of time--while she sank into the chair, and raised her eyes
to her brother, who stood over her.  "I know nothing, Walter.  What is
it?" she said, faintly.

He told her everything, very inartificially, in slow fragments, making
her aware that the scandal went much beyond proof, especially as to the
end of Raffles.

"People will talk," he said.  "Even if a man has been acquitted by a
jury, they'll talk, and nod and wink--and as far as the world goes, a
man might often as well be guilty as not.  It's a breakdown blow, and
it damages Lydgate as much as Bulstrode.  I don't pretend to say what
is the truth.  I only wish we had never heard the name of either
Bulstrode or Lydgate.  You'd better have been a Vincy all your life,
and so had Rosamond."  Mrs. Bulstrode made no reply.

"But you must bear up as well as you can, Harriet.  People don't blame
_you_. And I'll stand by you whatever you make up your mind to do,"
said the brother, with rough but well-meaning affectionateness.

"Give me your arm to the carriage, Walter," said Mrs. Bulstrode.  "I
feel very weak."

And when she got home she was obliged to say to her daughter, "I am not
well, my dear; I must go and lie down.  Attend to your papa.  Leave me
in quiet.  I shall take no dinner."

She locked herself in her room.  She needed time to get used to her
maimed consciousness, her poor lopped life, before she could walk
steadily to the place allotted her.  A new searching light had fallen
on her husband's character, and she could not judge him leniently: the
twenty years in which she had believed in him and venerated him by
virtue of his concealments came back with particulars that made them
seem an odious deceit.  He had married her with that bad past life
hidden behind him, and she had no faith left to protest his innocence
of the worst that was imputed to him.  Her honest ostentatious nature
made the sharing of a merited dishonor as bitter as it could be to any
mortal.

But this imperfectly taught woman, whose phrases and habits were an odd
patchwork, had a loyal spirit within her.  The man whose prosperity she
had shared through nearly half a life, and who had unvaryingly
cherished her--now that punishment had befallen him it was not possible
to her in any sense to forsake him.  There is a forsaking which still
sits at the same board and lies on the same couch with the forsaken
soul, withering it the more by unloving proximity.  She knew, when she
locked her door, that she should unlock it ready to go down to her
unhappy husband and espouse his sorrow, and say of his guilt, I will
mourn and not reproach.  But she needed time to gather up her strength;
she needed to sob out her farewell to all the gladness and pride of her
life.  When she had resolved to go down, she prepared herself by some
little acts which might seem mere folly to a hard onlooker; they were
her way of expressing to all spectators visible or invisible that she
had begun a new life in which she embraced humiliation.  She took off
all her ornaments and put on a plain black gown, and instead of wearing
her much-adorned cap and large bows of hair, she brushed her hair down
and put on a plain bonnet-cap, which made her look suddenly like an
early Methodist.

Bulstrode, who knew that his wife had been out and had come in saying
that she was not well, had spent the time in an agitation equal to
hers.  He had looked forward to her learning the truth from others, and
had acquiesced in that probability, as something easier to him than any
confession.  But now that he imagined the moment of her knowledge come,
he awaited the result in anguish.  His daughters had been obliged to
consent to leave him, and though he had allowed some food to be brought
to him, he had not touched it.  He felt himself perishing slowly in
unpitied misery.  Perhaps he should never see his wife's face with
affection in it again.  And if he turned to God there seemed to be no
answer but the pressure of retribution.

It was eight o'clock in the evening before the door opened and his wife
entered.  He dared not look up at her.  He sat with his eyes bent down,
and as she went towards him she thought he looked smaller--he seemed
so withered and shrunken.  A movement of new compassion and old
tenderness went through her like a great wave, and putting one hand on
his which rested on the arm of the chair, and the other on his
shoulder, she said, solemnly but kindly--

"Look up, Nicholas."

He raised his eyes with a little start and looked at her half amazed
for a moment: her pale face, her changed, mourning dress, the trembling
about her mouth, all said, "I know;" and her hands and eyes rested
gently on him.  He burst out crying and they cried together, she
sitting at his side.  They could not yet speak to each other of the
shame which she was bearing with him, or of the acts which had brought
it down on them.  His confession was silent, and her promise of
faithfulness was silent.  Open-minded as she was, she nevertheless
shrank from the words which would have expressed their mutual
consciousness, as she would have shrunk from flakes of fire.  She could
not say, "How much is only slander and false suspicion?" and he did not
say, "I am innocent."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Most women in Middlemarch feel sorriest for the wives of Mr. Bulstrode and Lydgate, since they have to bear the brunt of their husbands' humiliation. They feel sorrier for Mrs. Bulstrode than they do for her niece, Rosamond, though, because Mrs. Bulstrode has always been a cheerful, friendly woman, while Rosamond is kind of snooty. Meanwhile, Mrs. Bulstrode has no idea what's going on - her husband is sick, and no one will tell her what happened. Finally, she goes to her brother, Mr. Vincy, and he gives her the scoop on her husband. When she gets home, she locks herself in her room for a while, to get used to the idea of living in humiliation for the rest of her life. But she's not about to abandon her husband, now that he's publicly shamed; she's too loyal for that. Once she's calmer, she puts on a mourning dress , and goes to her husband. They have a good cry together, and make an unspoken agreement to stick it out as a team.


prompt:
Chapter: "Le sentiment de la faussete des plaisirs presents, et
    l'ignorance de la vanite des plaisirs absents causent
    l'inconstance."--PASCAL.

Rosamond had a gleam of returning cheerfulness when the house was freed
from the threatening figure, and when all the disagreeable creditors
were paid.  But she was not joyous: her married life had fulfilled none
of her hopes, and had been quite spoiled for her imagination.  In this
brief interval of calm, Lydgate, remembering that he had often been
stormy in his hours of perturbation, and mindful of the pain Rosamond
had had to bear, was carefully gentle towards her; but he, too, had
lost some of his old spirit, and he still felt it necessary to refer to
an economical change in their way of living as a matter of course,
trying to reconcile her to it gradually, and repressing his anger when
she answered by wishing that he would go to live in London.  When she
did not make this answer, she listened languidly, and wondered what she
had that was worth living for.  The hard and contemptuous words which
had fallen from her husband in his anger had deeply offended that
vanity which he had at first called into active enjoyment; and what she
regarded as his perverse way of looking at things, kept up a secret
repulsion, which made her receive all his tenderness as a poor
substitute for the happiness he had failed to give her.  They were at a
disadvantage with their neighbors, and there was no longer any outlook
towards Quallingham--there was no outlook anywhere except in an
occasional letter from Will Ladislaw.  She had felt stung and
disappointed by Will's resolution to quit Middlemarch, for in spite of
what she knew and guessed about his admiration for Dorothea, she
secretly cherished the belief that he had, or would necessarily come to
have, much more admiration for herself; Rosamond being one of those
women who live much in the idea that each man they meet would have
preferred them if the preference had not been hopeless.  Mrs. Casaubon
was all very well; but Will's interest in her dated before he knew Mrs.
Lydgate.  Rosamond took his way of talking to herself, which was a
mixture of playful fault-finding and hyperbolical gallantry, as the
disguise of a deeper feeling; and in his presence she felt that
agreeable titillation of vanity and sense of romantic drama which
Lydgate's presence had no longer the magic to create.  She even
fancied--what will not men and women fancy in these matters?--that
Will exaggerated his admiration for Mrs. Casaubon in order to pique
herself.  In this way poor Rosamond's brain had been busy before Will's
departure.  He would have made, she thought, a much more suitable
husband for her than she had found in Lydgate.  No notion could have
been falser than this, for Rosamond's discontent in her marriage was
due to the conditions of marriage itself, to its demand for
self-suppression and tolerance, and not to the nature of her husband;
but the easy conception of an unreal Better had a sentimental charm
which diverted her ennui.  She constructed a little romance which was
to vary the flatness of her life: Will Ladislaw was always to be a
bachelor and live near her, always to be at her command, and have an
understood though never fully expressed passion for her, which would be
sending out lambent flames every now and then in interesting scenes.
His departure had been a proportionate disappointment, and had sadly
increased her weariness of Middlemarch; but at first she had the
alternative dream of pleasures in store from her intercourse with the
family at Quallingham.  Since then the troubles of her married life had
deepened, and the absence of other relief encouraged her regretful
rumination over that thin romance which she had once fed on.  Men and
women make sad mistakes about their own symptoms, taking their vague
uneasy longings, sometimes for genius, sometimes for religion, and
oftener still for a mighty love.  Will Ladislaw had written chatty
letters, half to her and half to Lydgate, and she had replied: their
separation, she felt, was not likely to be final, and the change she
now most longed for was that Lydgate should go to live in London;
everything would be agreeable in London; and she had set to work with
quiet determination to win this result, when there came a sudden,
delightful promise which inspirited her.

It came shortly before the memorable meeting at the town-hall, and was
nothing less than a letter from Will Ladislaw to Lydgate, which turned
indeed chiefly on his new interest in plans of colonization, but
mentioned incidentally, that he might find it necessary to pay a visit
to Middlemarch within the next few weeks--a very pleasant necessity, he
said, almost as good as holidays to a schoolboy.  He hoped there was
his old place on the rug, and a great deal of music in store for him.
But he was quite uncertain as to the time.  While Lydgate was reading
the letter to Rosamond, her face looked like a reviving flower--it grew
prettier and more blooming.  There was nothing unendurable now: the
debts were paid, Mr. Ladislaw was coming, and Lydgate would be
persuaded to leave Middlemarch and settle in London, which was "so
different from a provincial town."

That was a bright bit of morning.  But soon the sky became black over
poor Rosamond.  The presence of a new gloom in her husband, about which
he was entirely reserved towards her--for he dreaded to expose his
lacerated feeling to her neutrality and misconception--soon received a
painfully strange explanation, alien to all her previous notions of
what could affect her happiness.  In the new gayety of her spirits,
thinking that Lydgate had merely a worse fit of moodiness than usual,
causing him to leave her remarks unanswered, and evidently to keep out
of her way as much as possible, she chose, a few days after the
meeting, and without speaking to him on the subject, to send out notes
of invitation for a small evening party, feeling convinced that this
was a judicious step, since people seemed to have been keeping aloof
from them, and wanted restoring to the old habit of intercourse.  When
the invitations had been accepted, she would tell Lydgate, and give him
a wise admonition as to how a medical man should behave to his
neighbors; for Rosamond had the gravest little airs possible about
other people's duties.  But all the invitations were declined, and the
last answer came into Lydgate's hands.

"This is Chichely's scratch.  What is he writing to you about?" said
Lydgate, wonderingly, as he handed the note to her.  She was obliged to
let him see it, and, looking at her severely, he said--

"Why on earth have you been sending out invitations without telling me,
Rosamond?  I beg, I insist that you will not invite any one to this
house.  I suppose you have been inviting others, and they have refused
too."  She said nothing.

"Do you hear me?" thundered Lydgate.

"Yes, certainly I hear you," said Rosamond, turning her head aside with
the movement of a graceful long-necked bird.

Lydgate tossed his head without any grace and walked out of the room,
feeling himself dangerous.  Rosamond's thought was, that he was getting
more and more unbearable--not that there was any new special reason for
this peremptoriness.  His indisposition to tell her anything in which
he was sure beforehand that she would not be interested was growing
into an unreflecting habit, and she was in ignorance of everything
connected with the thousand pounds except that the loan had come from
her uncle Bulstrode.  Lydgate's odious humors and their neighbors'
apparent avoidance of them had an unaccountable date for her in their
relief from money difficulties.  If the invitations had been accepted
she would have gone to invite her mamma and the rest, whom she had seen
nothing of for several days; and she now put on her bonnet to go and
inquire what had become of them all, suddenly feeling as if there were
a conspiracy to leave her in isolation with a husband disposed to
offend everybody.  It was after the dinner hour, and she found her
father and mother seated together alone in the drawing-room. They
greeted her with sad looks, saying "Well, my dear!" and no more.  She
had never seen her father look so downcast; and seating herself near
him she said--

"Is there anything the matter, papa?"

He did not answer, but Mrs. Vincy said, "Oh, my dear, have you heard
nothing?  It won't be long before it reaches you."

"Is it anything about Tertius?" said Rosamond, turning pale.  The idea
of trouble immediately connected itself with what had been
unaccountable to her in him.

"Oh, my dear, yes.  To think of your marrying into this trouble.  Debt
was bad enough, but this will be worse."

"Stay, stay, Lucy," said Mr. Vincy.  "Have you heard nothing about your
uncle Bulstrode, Rosamond?"

"No, papa," said the poor thing, feeling as if trouble were not
anything she had before experienced, but some invisible power with an
iron grasp that made her soul faint within her.

Her father told her everything, saying at the end, "It's better for you
to know, my dear.  I think Lydgate must leave the town.  Things have
gone against him.  I dare say he couldn't help it.  I don't accuse him
of any harm," said Mr. Vincy.  He had always before been disposed to
find the utmost fault with Lydgate.

The shock to Rosamond was terrible.  It seemed to her that no lot could
be so cruelly hard as hers to have married a man who had become the
centre of infamous suspicions.  In many cases it is inevitable that the
shame is felt to be the worst part of crime; and it would have required
a great deal of disentangling reflection, such as had never entered
into Rosamond's life, for her in these moments to feel that her trouble
was less than if her husband had been certainly known to have done
something criminal.  All the shame seemed to be there.  And she had
innocently married this man with the belief that he and his family were
a glory to her!  She showed her usual reticence to her parents, and
only said, that if Lydgate had done as she wished he would have left
Middlemarch long ago.

"She bears it beyond anything," said her mother when she was gone.

"Ah, thank God!" said Mr. Vincy, who was much broken down.

But Rosamond went home with a sense of justified repugnance towards her
husband.  What had he really done--how had he really acted?  She did
not know.  Why had he not told her everything?  He did not speak to her
on the subject, and of course she could not speak to him.  It came into
her mind once that she would ask her father to let her go home again;
but dwelling on that prospect made it seem utter dreariness to her: a
married woman gone back to live with her parents--life seemed to have
no meaning for her in such a position: she could not contemplate
herself in it.

The next two days Lydgate observed a change in her, and believed that
she had heard the bad news.  Would she speak to him about it, or would
she go on forever in the silence which seemed to imply that she
believed him guilty?  We must remember that he was in a morbid state of
mind, in which almost all contact was pain.  Certainly Rosamond in this
case had equal reason to complain of reserve and want of confidence on
his part; but in the bitterness of his soul he excused himself;--was
he not justified in shrinking from the task of telling her, since now
she knew the truth she had no impulse to speak to him?  But a
deeper-lying consciousness that he was in fault made him restless, and
the silence between them became intolerable to him; it was as if they
were both adrift on one piece of wreck and looked away from each other.

He thought, "I am a fool.  Haven't I given up expecting anything?  I
have married care, not help."  And that evening he said--

"Rosamond, have you heard anything that distresses you?"

"Yes," she answered, laying down her work, which she had been carrying
on with a languid semi-consciousness, most unlike her usual self.

"What have you heard?"

"Everything, I suppose.  Papa told me."

"That people think me disgraced?"

"Yes," said Rosamond, faintly, beginning to sew again automatically.

There was silence.  Lydgate thought, "If she has any trust in me--any
notion of what I am, she ought to speak now and say that she does not
believe I have deserved disgrace."

But Rosamond on her side went on moving her fingers languidly.
Whatever was to be said on the subject she expected to come from
Tertius.  What did she know?  And if he were innocent of any wrong, why
did he not do something to clear himself?

This silence of hers brought a new rush of gall to that bitter mood in
which Lydgate had been saying to himself that nobody believed in
him--even Farebrother had not come forward.  He had begun to question
her with the intent that their conversation should disperse the chill
fog which had gathered between them, but he felt his resolution checked
by despairing resentment.  Even this trouble, like the rest, she seemed
to regard as if it were hers alone.  He was always to her a being
apart, doing what she objected to.  He started from his chair with an
angry impulse, and thrusting his hands in his pockets, walked up and
down the room.  There was an underlying consciousness all the while
that he should have to master this anger, and tell her everything, and
convince her of the facts.  For he had almost learned the lesson that
he must bend himself to her nature, and that because she came short in
her sympathy, he must give the more.  Soon he recurred to his intention
of opening himself: the occasion must not be lost.  If he could bring
her to feel with some solemnity that here was a slander which must be
met and not run away from, and that the whole trouble had come out of
his desperate want of money, it would be a moment for urging powerfully
on her that they should be one in the resolve to do with as little
money as possible, so that they might weather the bad time and keep
themselves independent.  He would mention the definite measures which
he desired to take, and win her to a willing spirit.  He was bound to
try this--and what else was there for him to do?

He did not know how long he had been walking uneasily backwards and
forwards, but Rosamond felt that it was long, and wished that he would
sit down.  She too had begun to think this an opportunity for urging on
Tertius what he ought to do.  Whatever might be the truth about all
this misery, there was one dread which asserted itself.

Lydgate at last seated himself, not in his usual chair, but in one
nearer to Rosamond, leaning aside in it towards her, and looking at her
gravely before he reopened the sad subject.  He had conquered himself
so far, and was about to speak with a sense of solemnity, as on an
occasion which was not to be repeated.  He had even opened his lips,
when Rosamond, letting her hands fall, looked at him and said--

"Surely, Tertius--"

"Well?"

"Surely now at last you have given up the idea of staying in
Middlemarch.  I cannot go on living here.  Let us go to London.  Papa,
and every one else, says you had better go.  Whatever misery I have to
put up with, it will be easier away from here."

Lydgate felt miserably jarred.  Instead of that critical outpouring for
which he had prepared himself with effort, here was the old round to be
gone through again.  He could not bear it.  With a quick change of
countenance he rose and went out of the room.

Perhaps if he had been strong enough to persist in his determination to
be the more because she was less, that evening might have had a better
issue.  If his energy could have borne down that check, he might still
have wrought on Rosamond's vision and will.  We cannot be sure that any
natures, however inflexible or peculiar, will resist this effect from a
more massive being than their own.  They may be taken by storm and for
the moment converted, becoming part of the soul which enwraps them in
the ardor of its movement.  But poor Lydgate had a throbbing pain
within him, and his energy had fallen short of its task.

The beginning of mutual understanding and resolve seemed as far off as
ever; nay, it seemed blocked out by the sense of unsuccessful effort.
They lived on from day to day with their thoughts still apart, Lydgate
going about what work he had in a mood of despair, and Rosamond
feeling, with some justification, that he was behaving cruelly.  It was
of no use to say anything to Tertius; but when Will Ladislaw came, she
was determined to tell him everything.  In spite of her general
reticence, she needed some one who would recognize her wrongs.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Rosamond is depressed. She no longer has any hopeful prospects about Lydgate's family, and the only bright spots in her life are the occasional letters she receives from Will. She likes to believe that Will is secretly in love with her, not because she wants to cheat on her husband, but because she wants to be the center of everybody's universe and likes to think that she has everyone in her power. One morning, Rosamond is reading letters, and Lydgate picks one up - it's from Mr. Chichely, declining an invitation to a dinner party at their house. Lydgate asks her how many people she's invited without telling him, and asks if they've all refused? She doesn't answer, but knows that all their friends are avoiding them for some reason. She goes to her parents' house, and they tell her everything. When she gets home, she tells Lydgate that she knows everything about his disgrace, but doesn't add that she believes him to be innocent. She's not at all sympathetic, and he has to leave the room. They're as distant from each other as ever. Rosamond resolves to tell Will Ladislaw the whole story when he comes. She thinks that at least he will see how blameless she has been in the whole affair.