prompt:
Chapter: "For there can live no hatred in thine eye,
     Therefore in that I cannot know thy change:
     In many's looks the false heart's history
     Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange:
     But Heaven in thy creation did decree
     That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell:
     Whate'er thy thoughts or thy heart's workings be
     Thy looks should nothing thence but sweetness tell."
                                       --SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets.

At the time when Mr. Vincy uttered that presentiment about Rosamond,
she herself had never had the idea that she should be driven to make
the sort of appeal which he foresaw.  She had not yet had any anxiety
about ways and means, although her domestic life had been expensive as
well as eventful.  Her baby had been born prematurely, and all the
embroidered robes and caps had to be laid by in darkness.  This
misfortune was attributed entirely to her having persisted in going out
on horseback one day when her husband had desired her not to do so; but
it must not be supposed that she had shown temper on the occasion, or
rudely told him that she would do as she liked.

What led her particularly to desire horse-exercise was a visit from
Captain Lydgate, the baronet's third son, who, I am sorry to say, was
detested by our Tertius of that name as a vapid fop "parting his hair
from brow to nape in a despicable fashion" (not followed by Tertius
himself), and showing an ignorant security that he knew the proper
thing to say on every topic.  Lydgate inwardly cursed his own folly
that he had drawn down this visit by consenting to go to his uncle's on
the wedding-tour, and he made himself rather disagreeable to Rosamond
by saying so in private.  For to Rosamond this visit was a source of
unprecedented but gracefully concealed exultation.  She was so
intensely conscious of having a cousin who was a baronet's son staying
in the house, that she imagined the knowledge of what was implied by
his presence to be diffused through all other minds; and when she
introduced Captain Lydgate to her guests, she had a placid sense that
his rank penetrated them as if it had been an odor.  The satisfaction
was enough for the time to melt away some disappointment in the
conditions of marriage with a medical man even of good birth: it seemed
now that her marriage was visibly as well as ideally floating her above
the Middlemarch level, and the future looked bright with letters and
visits to and from Quallingham, and vague advancement in consequence
for Tertius.  Especially as, probably at the Captain's suggestion, his
married sister, Mrs. Mengan, had come with her maid, and stayed two
nights on her way from town.  Hence it was clearly worth while for
Rosamond to take pains with her music and the careful selection of her
lace.

As to Captain Lydgate himself, his low brow, his aquiline nose bent on
one side, and his rather heavy utterance, might have been
disadvantageous in any young gentleman who had not a military bearing
and mustache to give him what is doted on by some flower-like blond
heads as "style."  He had, moreover, that sort of high-breeding which
consists in being free from the petty solicitudes of middle-class
gentility, and he was a great critic of feminine charms.  Rosamond
delighted in his admiration now even more than she had done at
Quallingham, and he found it easy to spend several hours of the day in
flirting with her.  The visit altogether was one of the pleasantest
larks he had ever had, not the less so perhaps because he suspected
that his queer cousin Tertius wished him away: though Lydgate, who
would rather (hyperbolically speaking) have died than have failed in
polite hospitality, suppressed his dislike, and only pretended
generally not to hear what the gallant officer said, consigning the
task of answering him to Rosamond.  For he was not at all a jealous
husband, and preferred leaving a feather-headed young gentleman alone
with his wife to bearing him company.

"I wish you would talk more to the Captain at dinner, Tertius," said
Rosamond, one evening when the important guest was gone to Loamford to
see some brother officers stationed there.  "You really look so absent
sometimes--you seem to be seeing through his head into something behind
it, instead of looking at him."

"My dear Rosy, you don't expect me to talk much to such a conceited ass
as that, I hope," said Lydgate, brusquely.  "If he got his head broken,
I might look at it with interest, not before."

"I cannot conceive why you should speak of your cousin so
contemptuously," said Rosamond, her fingers moving at her work while
she spoke with a mild gravity which had a touch of disdain in it.

"Ask Ladislaw if he doesn't think your Captain the greatest bore he
ever met with.  Ladislaw has almost forsaken the house since he came."

Rosamond thought she knew perfectly well why Mr. Ladislaw disliked the
Captain: he was jealous, and she liked his being jealous.

"It is impossible to say what will suit eccentric persons," she
answered, "but in my opinion Captain Lydgate is a thorough gentleman,
and I think you ought not, out of respect to Sir Godwin, to treat him
with neglect."

"No, dear; but we have had dinners for him.  And he comes in and goes
out as he likes.  He doesn't want me."

"Still, when he is in the room, you might show him more attention.  He
may not be a phoenix of cleverness in your sense; his profession is
different; but it would be all the better for you to talk a little on
his subjects.  _I_ think his conversation is quite agreeable.  And he
is anything but an unprincipled man."

"The fact is, you would wish me to be a little more like him, Rosy,"
said Lydgate, in a sort of resigned murmur, with a smile which was not
exactly tender, and certainly not merry.  Rosamond was silent and did
not smile again; but the lovely curves of her face looked good-tempered
enough without smiling.

Those words of Lydgate's were like a sad milestone marking how far he
had travelled from his old dreamland, in which Rosamond Vincy appeared
to be that perfect piece of womanhood who would reverence her husband's
mind after the fashion of an accomplished mermaid, using her comb and
looking-glass and singing her song for the relaxation of his adored
wisdom alone.  He had begun to distinguish between that imagined
adoration and the attraction towards a man's talent because it gives
him prestige, and is like an order in his button-hole or an Honorable
before his name.

It might have been supposed that Rosamond had travelled too, since she
had found the pointless conversation of Mr. Ned Plymdale perfectly
wearisome; but to most mortals there is a stupidity which is
unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether acceptable--else,
indeed, what would become of social bonds?  Captain Lydgate's stupidity
was delicately scented, carried itself with "style," talked with a good
accent, and was closely related to Sir Godwin.  Rosamond found it quite
agreeable and caught many of its phrases.

Therefore since Rosamond, as we know, was fond of horseback, there were
plenty of reasons why she should be tempted to resume her riding when
Captain Lydgate, who had ordered his man with two horses to follow him
and put up at the "Green Dragon," begged her to go out on the gray
which he warranted to be gentle and trained to carry a lady--indeed, he
had bought it for his sister, and was taking it to Quallingham.
Rosamond went out the first time without telling her husband, and came
back before his return; but the ride had been so thorough a success,
and she declared herself so much the better in consequence, that he was
informed of it with full reliance on his consent that she should go
riding again.

On the contrary Lydgate was more than hurt--he was utterly confounded
that she had risked herself on a strange horse without referring the
matter to his wish.  After the first almost thundering exclamations of
astonishment, which sufficiently warned Rosamond of what was coming, he
was silent for some moments.

"However, you have come back safely," he said, at last, in a decisive
tone.  "You will not go again, Rosy; that is understood.  If it were
the quietest, most familiar horse in the world, there would always be
the chance of accident.  And you know very well that I wished you to
give up riding the roan on that account."

"But there is the chance of accident indoors, Tertius."

"My darling, don't talk nonsense," said Lydgate, in an imploring tone;
"surely I am the person to judge for you.  I think it is enough that I
say you are not to go again."

Rosamond was arranging her hair before dinner, and the reflection of
her head in the glass showed no change in its loveliness except a
little turning aside of the long neck.  Lydgate had been moving about
with his hands in his pockets, and now paused near her, as if he
awaited some assurance.

"I wish you would fasten up my plaits, dear," said Rosamond, letting
her arms fall with a little sigh, so as to make a husband ashamed of
standing there like a brute.  Lydgate had often fastened the plaits
before, being among the deftest of men with his large finely formed
fingers.  He swept up the soft festoons of plaits and fastened in the
tall comb (to such uses do men come!); and what could he do then but
kiss the exquisite nape which was shown in all its delicate curves?
But when we do what we have done before, it is often with a difference.
Lydgate was still angry, and had not forgotten his point.

"I shall tell the Captain that he ought to have known better than offer
you his horse," he said, as he moved away.

"I beg you will not do anything of the kind, Tertius," said Rosamond,
looking at him with something more marked than usual in her speech.
"It will be treating me as if I were a child.  Promise that you will
leave the subject to me."

There did seem to be some truth in her objection.  Lydgate said, "Very
well," with a surly obedience, and thus the discussion ended with his
promising Rosamond, and not with her promising him.

In fact, she had been determined not to promise.  Rosamond had that
victorious obstinacy which never wastes its energy in impetuous
resistance.  What she liked to do was to her the right thing, and all
her cleverness was directed to getting the means of doing it.  She
meant to go out riding again on the gray, and she did go on the next
opportunity of her husband's absence, not intending that he should know
until it was late enough not to signify to her.  The temptation was
certainly great: she was very fond of the exercise, and the
gratification of riding on a fine horse, with Captain Lydgate, Sir
Godwin's son, on another fine horse by her side, and of being met in
this position by any one but her husband, was something as good as her
dreams before marriage: moreover she was riveting the connection with
the family at Quallingham, which must be a wise thing to do.

But the gentle gray, unprepared for the crash of a tree that was being
felled on the edge of Halsell wood, took fright, and caused a worse
fright to Rosamond, leading finally to the loss of her baby.  Lydgate
could not show his anger towards her, but he was rather bearish to the
Captain, whose visit naturally soon came to an end.

In all future conversations on the subject, Rosamond was mildly certain
that the ride had made no difference, and that if she had stayed at
home the same symptoms would have come on and would have ended in the
same way, because she had felt something like them before.

Lydgate could only say, "Poor, poor darling!"--but he secretly wondered
over the terrible tenacity of this mild creature.  There was gathering
within him an amazed sense of his powerlessness over Rosamond.  His
superior knowledge and mental force, instead of being, as he had
imagined, a shrine to consult on all occasions, was simply set aside on
every practical question.  He had regarded Rosamond's cleverness as
precisely of the receptive kind which became a woman.  He was now
beginning to find out what that cleverness was--what was the shape into
which it had run as into a close network aloof and independent.  No one
quicker than Rosamond to see causes and effects which lay within the
track of her own tastes and interests: she had seen clearly Lydgate's
preeminence in Middlemarch society, and could go on imaginatively
tracing still more agreeable social effects when his talent should have
advanced him; but for her, his professional and scientific ambition had
no other relation to these desirable effects than if they had been the
fortunate discovery of an ill-smelling oil.  And that oil apart, with
which she had nothing to do, of course she believed in her own opinion
more than she did in his.  Lydgate was astounded to find in numberless
trifling matters, as well as in this last serious case of the riding,
that affection did not make her compliant.  He had no doubt that the
affection was there, and had no presentiment that he had done anything
to repel it.  For his own part he said to himself that he loved her as
tenderly as ever, and could make up his mind to her negations;
but--well!  Lydgate was much worried, and conscious of new elements in
his life as noxious to him as an inlet of mud to a creature that has
been used to breathe and bathe and dart after its illuminated prey in
the clearest of waters.

Rosamond was soon looking lovelier than ever at her worktable, enjoying
drives in her father's phaeton and thinking it likely that she might be
invited to Quallingham.  She knew that she was a much more exquisite
ornament to the drawing-room there than any daughter of the family, and
in reflecting that the gentlemen were aware of that, did not perhaps
sufficiently consider whether the ladies would be eager to see
themselves surpassed.

Lydgate, relieved from anxiety about her, relapsed into what she
inwardly called his moodiness--a name which to her covered his
thoughtful preoccupation with other subjects than herself, as well as
that uneasy look of the brow and distaste for all ordinary things as if
they were mixed with bitter herbs, which really made a sort of
weather-glass to his vexation and foreboding.  These latter states of
mind had one cause amongst others, which he had generously but
mistakenly avoided mentioning to Rosamond, lest it should affect her
health and spirits.  Between him and her indeed there was that total
missing of each other's mental track, which is too evidently possible
even between persons who are continually thinking of each other.  To
Lydgate it seemed that he had been spending month after month in
sacrificing more than half of his best intent and best power to his
tenderness for Rosamond; bearing her little claims and interruptions
without impatience, and, above all, bearing without betrayal of
bitterness to look through less and less of interfering illusion at the
blank unreflecting surface her mind presented to his ardor for the more
impersonal ends of his profession and his scientific study, an ardor
which he had fancied that the ideal wife must somehow worship as
sublime, though not in the least knowing why.  But his endurance was
mingled with a self-discontent which, if we know how to be candid, we
shall confess to make more than half our bitterness under grievances,
wife or husband included.  It always remains true that if we had been
greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us.  Lydgate
was aware that his concessions to Rosamond were often little more than
the lapse of slackening resolution, the creeping paralysis apt to seize
an enthusiasm which is out of adjustment to a constant portion of our
lives.  And on Lydgate's enthusiasm there was constantly pressing not a
simple weight of sorrow, but the biting presence of a petty degrading
care, such as casts the blight of irony over all higher effort.

This was the care which he had hitherto abstained from mentioning to
Rosamond; and he believed, with some wonder, that it had never entered
her mind, though certainly no difficulty could be less mysterious.  It
was an inference with a conspicuous handle to it, and had been easily
drawn by indifferent observers, that Lydgate was in debt; and he could
not succeed in keeping out of his mind for long together that he was
every day getting deeper into that swamp, which tempts men towards it
with such a pretty covering of flowers and verdure.  It is wonderful
how soon a man gets up to his chin there--in a condition in which,
in spite of himself, he is forced to think chiefly of release, though he
had a scheme of the universe in his soul.

Eighteen months ago Lydgate was poor, but had never known the eager
want of small sums, and felt rather a burning contempt for any one who
descended a step in order to gain them.  He was now experiencing
something worse than a simple deficit: he was assailed by the vulgar
hateful trials of a man who has bought and used a great many things
which might have been done without, and which he is unable to pay for,
though the demand for payment has become pressing.

How this came about may be easily seen without much arithmetic or
knowledge of prices.  When a man in setting up a house and preparing
for marriage finds that his furniture and other initial expenses come
to between four and five hundred pounds more than he has capital to pay
for; when at the end of a year it appears that his household expenses,
horses and et caeteras, amount to nearly a thousand, while the proceeds
of the practice reckoned from the old books to be worth eight hundred
per annum have sunk like a summer pond and make hardly five hundred,
chiefly in unpaid entries, the plain inference is that, whether he
minds it or not, he is in debt.  Those were less expensive times than
our own, and provincial life was comparatively modest; but the ease
with which a medical man who had lately bought a practice, who thought
that he was obliged to keep two horses, whose table was supplied
without stint, and who paid an insurance on his life and a high rent
for house and garden, might find his expenses doubling his receipts,
can be conceived by any one who does not think these details beneath
his consideration.  Rosamond, accustomed from her childhood to an extravagant
household, thought that good housekeeping consisted simply in ordering
the best of everything--nothing else "answered;" and Lydgate supposed
that "if things were done at all, they must be done properly"--he did
not see how they were to live otherwise.  If each head of household
expenditure had been mentioned to him beforehand, he would have
probably observed that "it could hardly come to much," and if any one
had suggested a saving on a particular article--for example, the
substitution of cheap fish for dear--it would have appeared to him
simply a penny-wise, mean notion.  Rosamond, even without such an
occasion as Captain Lydgate's visit, was fond of giving invitations,
and Lydgate, though he often thought the guests tiresome, did not
interfere.  This sociability seemed a necessary part of professional
prudence, and the entertainment must be suitable.  It is true Lydgate
was constantly visiting the homes of the poor and adjusting his
prescriptions of diet to their small means; but, dear me! has it not by
this time ceased to be remarkable--is it not rather that we expect in
men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by
side and never compare them with each other?  Expenditure--like
ugliness and errors--becomes a totally new thing when we attach our own
personality to it, and measure it by that wide difference which is
manifest (in our own sensations) between ourselves and others.  Lydgate
believed himself to be careless about his dress, and he despised a man
who calculated the effects of his costume; it seemed to him only a
matter of course that he had abundance of fresh garments--such things
were naturally ordered in sheaves.  It must be remembered that he had
never hitherto felt the check of importunate debt, and he walked by
habit, not by self-criticism.  But the check had come.

Its novelty made it the more irritating.  He was amazed, disgusted that
conditions so foreign to all his purposes, so hatefully disconnected
with the objects he cared to occupy himself with, should have lain in
ambush and clutched him when he was unaware.  And there was not only
the actual debt; there was the certainty that in his present position
he must go on deepening it.  Two furnishing tradesmen at Brassing,
whose bills had been incurred before his marriage, and whom
uncalculated current expenses had ever since prevented him from paying,
had repeatedly sent him unpleasant letters which had forced themselves
on his attention.  This could hardly have been more galling to any
disposition than to Lydgate's, with his intense pride--his dislike of
asking a favor or being under an obligation to any one.  He had scorned
even to form conjectures about Mr. Vincy's intentions on money matters,
and nothing but extremity could have induced him to apply to his
father-in-law, even if he had not been made aware in various indirect
ways since his marriage that Mr. Vincy's own affairs were not
flourishing, and that the expectation of help from him would be
resented.  Some men easily trust in the readiness of friends; it had
never in the former part of his life occurred to Lydgate that he should
need to do so: he had never thought what borrowing would be to him; but
now that the idea had entered his mind, he felt that he would rather
incur any other hardship.  In the mean time he had no money or
prospects of money; and his practice was not getting more lucrative.

No wonder that Lydgate had been unable to suppress all signs of inward
trouble during the last few months, and now that Rosamond was regaining
brilliant health, he meditated taking her entirely into confidence on
his difficulties.  New conversance with tradesmen's bills had forced
his reasoning into a new channel of comparison: he had begun to
consider from a new point of view what was necessary and unnecessary in
goods ordered, and to see that there must be some change of habits.
How could such a change be made without Rosamond's concurrence?  The
immediate occasion of opening the disagreeable fact to her was forced
upon him.

Having no money, and having privately sought advice as to what security
could possibly be given by a man in his position, Lydgate had offered
the one good security in his power to the less peremptory creditor, who
was a silversmith and jeweller, and who consented to take on himself
the upholsterer's credit also, accepting interest for a given term.
The security necessary was a bill of sale on the furniture of his
house, which might make a creditor easy for a reasonable time about a
debt amounting to less than four hundred pounds; and the silversmith,
Mr. Dover, was willing to reduce it by taking back a portion of the
plate and any other article which was as good as new.  "Any other
article" was a phrase delicately implying jewellery, and more
particularly some purple amethysts costing thirty pounds, which Lydgate
had bought as a bridal present.

Opinions may be divided as to his wisdom in making this present: some
may think that it was a graceful attention to be expected from a man
like Lydgate, and that the fault of any troublesome consequences lay in
the pinched narrowness of provincial life at that time, which offered
no conveniences for professional people whose fortune was not
proportioned to their tastes; also, in Lydgate's ridiculous
fastidiousness about asking his friends for money.

However, it had seemed a question of no moment to him on that fine
morning when he went to give a final order for plate: in the presence
of other jewels enormously expensive, and as an addition to orders of
which the amount had not been exactly calculated, thirty pounds for
ornaments so exquisitely suited to Rosamond's neck and arms could
hardly appear excessive when there was no ready cash for it to exceed.
But at this crisis Lydgate's imagination could not help dwelling on the
possibility of letting the amethysts take their place again among Mr.
Dover's stock, though he shrank from the idea of proposing this to
Rosamond.  Having been roused to discern consequences which he had
never been in the habit of tracing, he was preparing to act on this
discernment with some of the rigor (by no means all) that he would have
applied in pursuing experiment.  He was nerving himself to this rigor
as he rode from Brassing, and meditated on the representations he must
make to Rosamond.

It was evening when he got home.  He was intensely miserable, this
strong man of nine-and-twenty and of many gifts.  He was not saying
angrily within himself that he had made a profound mistake; but the
mistake was at work in him like a recognized chronic disease, mingling
its uneasy importunities with every prospect, and enfeebling every
thought.  As he went along the passage to the drawing-room, he heard
the piano and singing.  Of course, Ladislaw was there.  It was some
weeks since Will had parted from Dorothea, yet he was still at the old
post in Middlemarch.  Lydgate had no objection in general to Ladislaw's
coming, but just now he was annoyed that he could not find his hearth
free.  When he opened the door the two singers went on towards the
key-note, raising their eyes and looking at him indeed, but not
regarding his entrance as an interruption.  To a man galled with his
harness as poor Lydgate was, it is not soothing to see two people
warbling at him, as he comes in with the sense that the painful day has
still pains in store.  His face, already paler than usual, took on a
scowl as he walked across the room and flung himself into a chair.

The singers feeling themselves excused by the fact that they had only
three bars to sing, now turned round.

"How are you, Lydgate?" said Will, coming forward to shake hands.

Lydgate took his hand, but did not think it necessary to speak.

"Have you dined, Tertius?  I expected you much earlier," said Rosamond,
who had already seen that her husband was in a "horrible humor." She
seated herself in her usual place as she spoke.

"I have dined.  I should like some tea, please," said Lydgate, curtly,
still scowling and looking markedly at his legs stretched out before
him.

Will was too quick to need more.  "I shall be off," he said, reaching
his hat.

"Tea is coming," said Rosamond; "pray don't go."

"Yes, Lydgate is bored," said Will, who had more comprehension of
Lydgate than Rosamond had, and was not offended by his manner, easily
imagining outdoor causes of annoyance.

"There is the more need for you to stay," said Rosamond, playfully, and
in her lightest accent; "he will not speak to me all the evening."

"Yes, Rosamond, I shall," said Lydgate, in his strong baritone.  "I
have some serious business to speak to you about."

No introduction of the business could have been less like that which
Lydgate had intended; but her indifferent manner had been too provoking.

"There! you see," said Will.  "I'm going to the meeting about the
Mechanics' Institute.  Good-by;" and he went quickly out of the room.

Rosamond did not look at her husband, but presently rose and took her
place before the tea-tray. She was thinking that she had never seen him
so disagreeable.  Lydgate turned his dark eyes on her and watched her
as she delicately handled the tea-service with her taper fingers, and
looked at the objects immediately before her with no curve in her face
disturbed, and yet with an ineffable protest in her air against all
people with unpleasant manners.  For the moment he lost the sense of
his wound in a sudden speculation about this new form of feminine
impassibility revealing itself in the sylph-like frame which he had
once interpreted as the sign of a ready intelligent sensitiveness.  His
mind glancing back to Laure while he looked at Rosamond, he said
inwardly, "Would _she_ kill me because I wearied her?" and then, "It is
the way with all women." But this power of generalizing which gives men
so much the superiority in mistake over the dumb animals, was
immediately thwarted by Lydgate's memory of wondering impressions from
the behavior of another woman--from Dorothea's looks and tones of
emotion about her husband when Lydgate began to attend him--from her
passionate cry to be taught what would best comfort that man for whose
sake it seemed as if she must quell every impulse in her except the
yearnings of faithfulness and compassion.  These revived impressions
succeeded each other quickly and dreamily in Lydgate's mind while the
tea was being brewed.  He had shut his eyes in the last instant of
reverie while he heard Dorothea saying, "Advise me--think what I can
do--he has been all his life laboring and looking forward.  He minds
about nothing else--and I mind about nothing else."

That voice of deep-souled womanhood had remained within him as the
enkindling conceptions of dead and sceptred genius had remained within
him (is there not a genius for feeling nobly which also reigns over
human spirits and their conclusions?); the tones were a music from
which he was falling away--he had really fallen into a momentary doze,
when Rosamond said in her silvery neutral way, "Here is your tea,
Tertius," setting it on the small table by his side, and then moved
back to her place without looking at him.  Lydgate was too hasty in
attributing insensibility to her; after her own fashion, she was
sensitive enough, and took lasting impressions.  Her impression now was
one of offence and repulsion.  But then, Rosamond had no scowls and had
never raised her voice: she was quite sure that no one could justly
find fault with her.

Perhaps Lydgate and she had never felt so far off each other before;
but there were strong reasons for not deferring his revelation, even if
he had not already begun it by that abrupt announcement; indeed some of
the angry desire to rouse her into more sensibility on his account
which had prompted him to speak prematurely, still mingled with his
pain in the prospect of her pain.  But he waited till the tray was
gone, the candles were lit, and the evening quiet might be counted on:
the interval had left time for repelled tenderness to return into the
old course.  He spoke kindly.

"Dear Rosy, lay down your work and come to sit by me," he said, gently,
pushing away the table, and stretching out his arm to draw a chair near
his own.

Rosamond obeyed.  As she came towards him in her drapery of transparent
faintly tinted muslin, her slim yet round figure never looked more
graceful; as she sat down by him and laid one hand on the elbow of his
chair, at last looking at him and meeting his eyes, her delicate neck
and cheek and purely cut lips never had more of that untarnished beauty
which touches as in spring-time and infancy and all sweet freshness.
It touched Lydgate now, and mingled the early moments of his love for
her with all the other memories which were stirred in this crisis of
deep trouble.  He laid his ample hand softly on hers, saying--

"Dear!" with the lingering utterance which affection gives to the word.
Rosamond too was still under the power of that same past, and her
husband was still in part the Lydgate whose approval had stirred
delight.  She put his hair lightly away from his forehead, then laid
her other hand on his, and was conscious of forgiving him.

"I am obliged to tell you what will hurt you, Rosy.  But there are
things which husband and wife must think of together.  I dare say it
has occurred to you already that I am short of money."

Lydgate paused; but Rosamond turned her neck and looked at a vase on
the mantel-piece.

"I was not able to pay for all the things we had to get before we were
married, and there have been expenses since which I have been obliged
to meet.  The consequence is, there is a large debt at Brassing--three
hundred and eighty pounds--which has been pressing on me a good while,
and in fact we are getting deeper every day, for people don't pay me
the faster because others want the money.  I took pains to keep it from
you while you were not well; but now we must think together about it,
and you must help me."

"What can--I--do, Tertius?" said Rosamond, turning her eyes on him
again.  That little speech of four words, like so many others in all
languages, is capable by varied vocal inflections of expressing all
states of mind from helpless dimness to exhaustive argumentative
perception, from the completest self-devoting fellowship to the most
neutral aloofness.  Rosamond's thin utterance threw into the words
"What can--I--do!" as much neutrality as they could hold.  They fell
like a mortal chill on Lydgate's roused tenderness.  He did not storm
in indignation--he felt too sad a sinking of the heart.  And when he
spoke again it was more in the tone of a man who forces himself to
fulfil a task.

"It is necessary for you to know, because I have to give security for a
time, and a man must come to make an inventory of the furniture."

Rosamond colored deeply.  "Have you not asked papa for money?" she
said, as soon as she could speak.

"No."

"Then I must ask him!" she said, releasing her hands from Lydgate's,
and rising to stand at two yards' distance from him.

"No, Rosy," said Lydgate, decisively.  "It is too late to do that.  The
inventory will be begun to-morrow. Remember it is a mere security: it
will make no difference: it is a temporary affair.  I insist upon it
that your father shall not know, unless I choose to tell him," added
Lydgate, with a more peremptory emphasis.

This certainly was unkind, but Rosamond had thrown him back on evil
expectation as to what she would do in the way of quiet steady
disobedience.  The unkindness seemed unpardonable to her: she was not
given to weeping and disliked it, but now her chin and lips began to
tremble and the tears welled up.  Perhaps it was not possible for
Lydgate, under the double stress of outward material difficulty and of
his own proud resistance to humiliating consequences, to imagine fully
what this sudden trial was to a young creature who had known nothing
but indulgence, and whose dreams had all been of new indulgence, more
exactly to her taste.  But he did wish to spare her as much as he
could, and her tears cut him to the heart.  He could not speak again
immediately; but Rosamond did not go on sobbing: she tried to conquer
her agitation and wiped away her tears, continuing to look before her
at the mantel-piece.

"Try not to grieve, darling," said Lydgate, turning his eyes up towards
her.  That she had chosen to move away from him in this moment of her
trouble made everything harder to say, but he must absolutely go on.
"We must brace ourselves to do what is necessary.  It is I who have
been in fault: I ought to have seen that I could not afford to live in
this way. But many things have told against me in my practice, and it
really just now has ebbed to a low point.  I may recover it, but in the
mean time we must pull up--we must change our way of living.  We shall
weather it.  When I have given this security I shall have time to look
about me; and you are so clever that if you turn your mind to managing
you will school me into carefulness.  I have been a thoughtless rascal
about squaring prices--but come, dear, sit down and forgive me."

Lydgate was bowing his neck under the yoke like a creature who had
talons, but who had Reason too, which often reduces us to meekness.
When he had spoken the last words in an imploring tone, Rosamond
returned to the chair by his side.  His self-blame gave her some hope
that he would attend to her opinion, and she said--

"Why can you not put off having the inventory made?  You can send the
men away to-morrow when they come."

"I shall not send them away," said Lydgate, the peremptoriness rising
again.  Was it of any use to explain?

"If we left Middlemarch? there would of course be a sale, and that
would do as well."

"But we are not going to leave Middlemarch."

"I am sure, Tertius, it would be much better to do so.  Why can we not
go to London?  Or near Durham, where your family is known?"

"We can go nowhere without money, Rosamond."

"Your friends would not wish you to be without money.  And surely these
odious tradesmen might be made to understand that, and to wait, if you
would make proper representations to them."

"This is idle Rosamond," said Lydgate, angrily.  "You must learn to
take my judgment on questions you don't understand.  I have made
necessary arrangements, and they must be carried out.  As to friends, I
have no expectations whatever from them, and shall not ask them for
anything."

Rosamond sat perfectly still.  The thought in her mind was that if she
had known how Lydgate would behave, she would never have married him.

"We have no time to waste now on unnecessary words, dear," said
Lydgate, trying to be gentle again.  "There are some details that I
want to consider with you.  Dover says he will take a good deal of the
plate back again, and any of the jewellery we like.  He really behaves
very well."

"Are we to go without spoons and forks then?" said Rosamond, whose very
lips seemed to get thinner with the thinness of her utterance.  She was
determined to make no further resistance or suggestions.

"Oh no, dear!" said Lydgate.  "But look here," he continued, drawing a
paper from his pocket and opening it; "here is Dover's account.  See, I
have marked a number of articles, which if we returned them would
reduce the amount by thirty pounds and more.  I have not marked any
of the jewellery."  Lydgate had really felt this point of the jewellery
very bitter to himself; but he had overcome the feeling by severe
argument.  He could not propose to Rosamond that she should return any
particular present of his, but he had told himself that he was bound to
put Dover's offer before her, and her inward prompting might make the
affair easy.

"It is useless for me to look, Tertius," said Rosamond, calmly; "you
will return what you please."  She would not turn her eyes on the
paper, and Lydgate, flushing up to the roots of his hair, drew it back
and let it fall on his knee.  Meanwhile Rosamond quietly went out of
the room, leaving Lydgate helpless and wondering.  Was she not coming
back?  It seemed that she had no more identified herself with him than
if they had been creatures of different species and opposing interests.
He tossed his head and thrust his hands deep into his pockets with a
sort of vengeance.  There was still science--there were still good
objects to work for.  He must give a tug still--all the stronger
because other satisfactions were going.

But the door opened and Rosamond re-entered. She carried the leather
box containing the amethysts, and a tiny ornamental basket which
contained other boxes, and laying them on the chair where she had been
sitting, she said, with perfect propriety in her air--

"This is all the jewellery you ever gave me.  You can return what you
like of it, and of the plate also.  You will not, of course, expect me
to stay at home to-morrow. I shall go to papa's."

To many women the look Lydgate cast at her would have been more
terrible than one of anger: it had in it a despairing acceptance of the
distance she was placing between them.

"And when shall you come back again?" he said, with a bitter edge on
his accent.

"Oh, in the evening.  Of course I shall not mention the subject to
mamma."  Rosamond was convinced that no woman could behave more
irreproachably than she was behaving; and she went to sit down at her
work-table. Lydgate sat meditating a minute or two, and the result was
that he said, with some of the old emotion in his tone--

"Now we have been united, Rosy, you should not leave me to myself in
the first trouble that has come."

"Certainly not," said Rosamond; "I shall do everything it becomes me to
do."

"It is not right that the thing should be left to servants, or that I
should have to speak to them about it.  And I shall be obliged to go
out--I don't know how early.  I understand your shrinking from the
humiliation of these money affairs.  But, my dear Rosamond, as a
question of pride, which I feel just as much as you can, it is surely
better to manage the thing ourselves, and let the servants see as
little of it as possible; and since you are my wife, there is no
hindering your share in my disgraces--if there were disgraces."

Rosamond did not answer immediately, but at last she said, "Very well,
I will stay at home."

"I shall not touch these jewels, Rosy.  Take them away again.  But I
will write out a list of plate that we may return, and that can be
packed up and sent at once."

"The servants will know _that_," said Rosamond, with the slightest
touch of sarcasm.

"Well, we must meet some disagreeables as necessities.  Where is the
ink, I wonder?" said Lydgate, rising, and throwing the account on the
larger table where he meant to write.

Rosamond went to reach the inkstand, and after setting it on the table
was going to turn away, when Lydgate, who was standing close by, put
his arm round her and drew her towards him, saying--

"Come, darling, let us make the best of things.  It will only be for a
time, I hope, that we shall have to be stingy and particular.  Kiss me."

His native warm-heartedness took a great deal of quenching, and it is a
part of manliness for a husband to feel keenly the fact that an
inexperienced girl has got into trouble by marrying him.  She received
his kiss and returned it faintly, and in this way an appearance of
accord was recovered for the time.  But Lydgate could not help looking
forward with dread to the inevitable future discussions about
expenditure and the necessity for a complete change in their way of
living.

    They said of old the Soul had human shape,
    But smaller, subtler than the fleshly self,
    So wandered forth for airing when it pleased.
    And see! beside her cherub-face there floats
    A pale-lipped form aerial whispering
    Its promptings in that little shell her ear."

News is often dispersed as thoughtlessly and effectively as that pollen
which the bees carry off (having no idea how powdery they are) when
they are buzzing in search of their particular nectar.  This fine
comparison has reference to Fred Vincy, who on that evening at Lowick
Parsonage heard a lively discussion among the ladies on the news which
their old servant had got from Tantripp concerning Mr. Casaubon's
strange mention of Mr. Ladislaw in a codicil to his will made not long
before his death.  Miss Winifred was astounded to find that her brother
had known the fact before, and observed that Camden was the most
wonderful man for knowing things and not telling them; whereupon Mary
Garth said that the codicil had perhaps got mixed up with the habits of
spiders, which Miss Winifred never would listen to.  Mrs. Farebrother
considered that the news had something to do with their having only
once seen Mr. Ladislaw at Lowick, and Miss Noble made many small
compassionate mewings.

Fred knew little and cared less about Ladislaw and the Casaubons, and
his mind never recurred to that discussion till one day calling on
Rosamond at his mother's request to deliver a message as he passed, he
happened to see Ladislaw going away.  Fred and Rosamond had little to
say to each other now that marriage had removed her from collision with
the unpleasantness of brothers, and especially now that he had taken
what she held the stupid and even reprehensible step of giving up the
Church to take to such a business as Mr. Garth's. Hence Fred talked by
preference of what he considered indifferent news, and "a propos of
that young Ladislaw" mentioned what he had heard at Lowick Parsonage.

Now Lydgate, like Mr. Farebrother, knew a great deal more than he told,
and when he had once been set thinking about the relation between Will
and Dorothea his conjectures had gone beyond the fact.  He imagined
that there was a passionate attachment on both sides, and this struck
him as much too serious to gossip about.  He remembered Will's
irritability when he had mentioned Mrs. Casaubon, and was the more
circumspect.  On the whole his surmises, in addition to what he knew of
the fact, increased his friendliness and tolerance towards Ladislaw,
and made him understand the vacillation which kept him at Middlemarch
after he had said that he should go away.  It was significant of the
separateness between Lydgate's mind and Rosamond's that he had no
impulse to speak to her on the subject; indeed, he did not quite trust
her reticence towards Will.  And he was right there; though he had no
vision of the way in which her mind would act in urging her to speak.

When she repeated Fred's news to Lydgate, he said, "Take care you don't
drop the faintest hint to Ladislaw, Rosy.  He is likely to fly out as
if you insulted him.  Of course it is a painful affair."

Rosamond turned her neck and patted her hair, looking the image of
placid indifference.  But the next time Will came when Lydgate was
away, she spoke archly about his not going to London as he had
threatened.

"I know all about it.  I have a confidential little bird," said she,
showing very pretty airs of her head over the bit of work held high
between her active fingers.  "There is a powerful magnet in this
neighborhood."

"To be sure there is.  Nobody knows that better than you," said Will,
with light gallantry, but inwardly prepared to be angry.

"It is really the most charming romance: Mr. Casaubon jealous, and
foreseeing that there was no one else whom Mrs. Casaubon would so much
like to marry, and no one who would so much like to marry her as a
certain gentleman; and then laying a plan to spoil all by making her
forfeit her property if she did marry that gentleman--and then--and
then--and then--oh, I have no doubt the end will be thoroughly
romantic."

"Great God! what do you mean?" said Will, flushing over face and ears,
his features seeming to change as if he had had a violent shake.
"Don't joke; tell me what you mean."

"You don't really know?" said Rosamond, no longer playful, and desiring
nothing better than to tell in order that she might evoke effects.

"No!" he returned, impatiently.

"Don't know that Mr. Casaubon has left it in his will that if Mrs.
Casaubon marries you she is to forfeit all her property?"

"How do you know that it is true?" said Will, eagerly.

"My brother Fred heard it from the Farebrothers."  Will started up from
his chair and reached his hat.

"I dare say she likes you better than the property," said Rosamond,
looking at him from a distance.

"Pray don't say any more about it," said Will, in a hoarse undertone
extremely unlike his usual light voice.  "It is a foul insult to her
and to me."  Then he sat down absently, looking before him, but seeing
nothing.

"Now you are angry with _me_," said Rosamond.  "It is too bad to bear
_me_ malice.  You ought to be obliged to me for telling you."

"So I am," said Will, abruptly, speaking with that kind of double soul
which belongs to dreamers who answer questions.

"I expect to hear of the marriage," said Rosamond, playfully.

"Never!  You will never hear of the marriage!"

With those words uttered impetuously, Will rose, put out his hand to
Rosamond, still with the air of a somnambulist, and went away.

When he was gone, Rosamond left her chair and walked to the other end
of the room, leaning when she got there against a chiffonniere, and
looking out of the window wearily.  She was oppressed by ennui, and by
that dissatisfaction which in women's minds is continually turning into
a trivial jealousy, referring to no real claims, springing from no
deeper passion than the vague exactingness of egoism, and yet capable
of impelling action as well as speech.  "There really is nothing to
care for much," said poor Rosamond inwardly, thinking of the family at
Quallingham, who did not write to her; and that perhaps Tertius when he
came home would tease her about expenses.  She had already secretly
disobeyed him by asking her father to help them, and he had ended
decisively by saying, "I am more likely to want help myself."

    Good phrases are surely, and ever were, very commendable.
                                          --Justice Shallow.

A few days afterwards--it was already the end of August--there was an
occasion which caused some excitement in Middlemarch: the public, if it
chose, was to have the advantage of buying, under the distinguished
auspices of Mr. Borthrop Trumbull, the furniture, books, and pictures
which anybody might see by the handbills to be the best in every kind,
belonging to Edwin Larcher, Esq. This was not one of the sales
indicating the depression of trade; on the contrary, it was due to Mr.
Larcher's great success in the carrying business, which warranted his
purchase of a mansion near Riverston already furnished in high style by
an illustrious Spa physician--furnished indeed with such large
framefuls of expensive flesh-painting in the dining-room, that Mrs.
Larcher was nervous until reassured by finding the subjects to be
Scriptural.  Hence the fine opportunity to purchasers which was well
pointed out in the handbills of Mr. Borthrop Trumbull, whose
acquaintance with the history of art enabled him to state that the hall
furniture, to be sold without reserve, comprised a piece of carving by
a contemporary of Gibbons.

At Middlemarch in those times a large sale was regarded as a kind of
festival.  There was a table spread with the best cold eatables, as at
a superior funeral; and facilities were offered for that
generous-drinking of cheerful glasses which might lead to generous and
cheerful bidding for undesirable articles.  Mr. Larcher's sale was the
more attractive in the fine weather because the house stood just at the
end of the town, with a garden and stables attached, in that pleasant
issue from Middlemarch called the London Road, which was also the road
to the New Hospital and to Mr. Bulstrode's retired residence, known as
the Shrubs.  In short, the auction was as good as a fair, and drew all
classes with leisure at command: to some, who risked making bids in
order simply to raise prices, it was almost equal to betting at the
races.  The second day, when the best furniture was to be sold,
"everybody" was there; even Mr. Thesiger, the rector of St. Peter's,
had looked in for a short time, wishing to buy the carved table, and
had rubbed elbows with Mr. Bambridge and Mr. Horrock.  There was a
wreath of Middlemarch ladies accommodated with seats round the large
table in the dining-room, where Mr. Borthrop Trumbull was mounted with
desk and hammer; but the rows chiefly of masculine faces behind were
often varied by incomings and outgoings both from the door and the
large bow-window opening on to the lawn.

"Everybody" that day did not include Mr. Bulstrode, whose health could
not well endure crowds and draughts.  But Mrs. Bulstrode had
particularly wished to have a certain picture--a "Supper at Emmaus,"
attributed in the catalogue to Guido; and at the last moment before the
day of the sale Mr. Bulstrode had called at the office of the
"Pioneer," of which he was now one of the proprietors, to beg of Mr.
Ladislaw as a great favor that he would obligingly use his remarkable
knowledge of pictures on behalf of Mrs. Bulstrode, and judge of the
value of this particular painting--"if," added the scrupulously polite
banker, "attendance at the sale would not interfere with the
arrangements for your departure, which I know is imminent."

This proviso might have sounded rather satirically in Will's ear if he
had been in a mood to care about such satire.  It referred to an
understanding entered into many weeks before with the proprietors of
the paper, that he should be at liberty any day he pleased to hand over
the management to the subeditor whom he had been training; since he
wished finally to quit Middlemarch.  But indefinite visions of ambition
are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly
agreeable; and we all know the difficulty of carrying out a resolve
when we secretly long that it may turn out to be unnecessary.  In such
states of mind the most incredulous person has a private leaning
towards miracle: impossible to conceive how our wish could be
fulfilled, still--very wonderful things have happened!  Will did not
confess this weakness to himself, but he lingered.  What was the use of
going to London at that time of the year?  The Rugby men who would
remember him were not there; and so far as political writing was
concerned, he would rather for a few weeks go on with the "Pioneer."
At the present moment, however, when Mr. Bulstrode was speaking to him,
he had both a strengthened resolve to go and an equally strong resolve
not to go till he had once more seen Dorothea.  Hence he replied that
he had reasons for deferring his departure a little, and would be happy
to go to the sale.

Will was in a defiant mood, his consciousness being deeply stung with
the thought that the people who looked at him probably knew a fact
tantamount to an accusation against him as a fellow with low designs
which were to be frustrated by a disposal of property.  Like most
people who assert their freedom with regard to conventional
distinction, he was prepared to be sudden and quick at quarrel with any
one who might hint that he had personal reasons for that assertion--that
there was anything in his blood, his bearing, or his character to
which he gave the mask of an opinion.  When he was under an irritating
impression of this kind he would go about for days with a defiant look,
the color changing in his transparent skin as if he were on the qui
vive, watching for something which he had to dart upon.

This expression was peculiarly noticeable in him at the sale, and those
who had only seen him in his moods of gentle oddity or of bright
enjoyment would have been struck with a contrast.  He was not sorry to
have this occasion for appearing in public before the Middlemarch
tribes of Toller, Hackbutt, and the rest, who looked down on him as an
adventurer, and were in a state of brutal ignorance about Dante--who
sneered at his Polish blood, and were themselves of a breed very much
in need of crossing.  He stood in a conspicuous place not far from the
auctioneer, with a fore-finger in each side-pocket and his head thrown
backward, not caring to speak to anybody, though he had been cordially
welcomed as a connoiss_ure_ by Mr. Trumbull, who was enjoying the
utmost activity of his great faculties.

And surely among all men whose vocation requires them to exhibit their
powers of speech, the happiest is a prosperous provincial auctioneer
keenly alive to his own jokes and sensible of his encyclopedic
knowledge.  Some saturnine, sour-blooded persons might object to be
constantly insisting on the merits of all articles from boot-jacks to
"Berghems;" but Mr. Borthrop Trumbull had a kindly liquid in his veins;
he was an admirer by nature, and would have liked to have the universe
under his hammer, feeling that it would go at a higher figure for his
recommendation.

Meanwhile Mrs. Larcher's drawing-room furniture was enough for him.
When Will Ladislaw had come in, a second fender, said to have been
forgotten in its right place, suddenly claimed the auctioneer's
enthusiasm, which he distributed on the equitable principle of praising
those things most which were most in need of praise.  The fender was of
polished steel, with much lancet-shaped open-work and a sharp edge.

"Now, ladies," said he, "I shall appeal to you.  Here is a fender which
at any other sale would hardly be offered with out reserve, being, as I
may say, for quality of steel and quaintness of design, a kind of
thing"--here Mr. Trumbull dropped his voice and became slightly nasal,
trimming his outlines with his left finger--"that might not fall in
with ordinary tastes.  Allow me to tell you that by-and-by this style
of workmanship will be the only one in vogue--half-a-crown, you said?
thank you--going at half-a-crown, this characteristic fender; and I
have particular information that the antique style is very much sought
after in high quarters.  Three shillings--three-and-sixpence--hold it
well up, Joseph!  Look, ladies, at the chastity of the design--I have
no doubt myself that it was turned out in the last century!  Four
shillings, Mr. Mawmsey?--four shillings."

"It's not a thing I would put in _my_ drawing-room," said Mrs. Mawmsey,
audibly, for the warning of the rash husband.  "I wonder _at_ Mrs.
Larcher.  Every blessed child's head that fell against it would be cut
in two.  The edge is like a knife."

"Quite true," rejoined Mr. Trumbull, quickly, "and most uncommonly
useful to have a fender at hand that will cut, if you have a leather
shoe-tie or a bit of string that wants cutting and no knife at hand:
many a man has been left hanging because there was no knife to cut him
down.  Gentlemen, here's a fender that if you had the misfortune to
hang yourselves would cut you down in no time--with astonishing
celerity--four-and-sixpence--five--five-and-sixpence--an appropriate
thing for a spare bedroom where there was a four-poster and a guest a
little out of his mind--six shillings--thank you, Mr. Clintup--going
at six shillings--going--gone!"  The auctioneer's glance, which had
been searching round him with a preternatural susceptibility to all
signs of bidding, here dropped on the paper before him, and his voice
too dropped into a tone of indifferent despatch as he said, "Mr.
Clintup.  Be handy, Joseph."

"It was worth six shillings to have a fender you could always tell that
joke on," said Mr. Clintup, laughing low and apologetically to his next
neighbor.  He was a diffident though distinguished nurseryman, and
feared that the audience might regard his bid as a foolish one.

Meanwhile Joseph had brought a trayful of small articles.  "Now,
ladies," said Mr. Trumbull, taking up one of the articles, "this tray
contains a very recherchy lot--a collection of trifles for the
drawing-room table--and trifles make the sum _of_ human things--nothing
more important than trifles--(yes, Mr. Ladislaw, yes, by-and-by)--but
pass the tray round, Joseph--these bijoux must be examined, ladies.
This I have in my hand is an ingenious contrivance--a sort of
practical rebus, I may call it: here, you see, it looks like an elegant
heart-shaped box, portable--for the pocket; there, again, it becomes
like a splendid double flower--an ornament for the table; and now"--Mr.
Trumbull allowed the flower to fall alarmingly into strings of
heart-shaped leaves--"a book of riddles!  No less than five hundred
printed in a beautiful red.  Gentlemen, if I had less of a conscience,
I should not wish you to bid high for this lot--I have a longing for
it myself.  What can promote innocent mirth, and I may say virtue, more
than a good riddle?--it hinders profane language, and attaches a man to
the society of refined females.  This ingenious article itself, without
the elegant domino-box, card-basket, &c., ought alone to give a high
price to the lot.  Carried in the pocket it might make an individual
welcome in any society.  Four shillings, sir?--four shillings for this
remarkable collection of riddles with the et caeteras.  Here is a
sample: 'How must you spell honey to make it catch lady-birds?
Answer--money.'  You hear?--lady-birds--honey money.  This is an
amusement to sharpen the intellect; it has a sting--it has what we call
satire, and wit without indecency.  Four-and-sixpence--five shillings."

The bidding ran on with warming rivalry.  Mr. Bowyer was a bidder, and
this was too exasperating.  Bowyer couldn't afford it, and only wanted
to hinder every other man from making a figure.  The current carried
even Mr. Horrock with it, but this committal of himself to an opinion
fell from him with so little sacrifice of his neutral expression, that
the bid might not have been detected as his but for the friendly oaths
of Mr. Bambridge, who wanted to know what Horrock would do with blasted
stuff only fit for haberdashers given over to that state of perdition
which the horse-dealer so cordially recognized in the majority of
earthly existences.  The lot was finally knocked down at a guinea to
Mr. Spilkins, a young Slender of the neighborhood, who was reckless
with his pocket-money and felt his want of memory for riddles.

"Come, Trumbull, this is too bad--you've been putting some old maid's
rubbish into the sale," murmured Mr. Toller, getting close to the
auctioneer.  "I want to see how the prints go, and I must be off soon."

"_Im_mediately, Mr. Toller.  It was only an act of benevolence which
your noble heart would approve.  Joseph! quick with the prints--Lot
235.  Now, gentlemen, you who are connoiss_ures_, you are going to have
a treat.  Here is an engraving of the Duke of Wellington surrounded by
his staff on the Field of Waterloo; and notwithstanding recent events
which have, as it were, enveloped our great Hero in a cloud, I will be
bold to say--for a man in my line must not be blown about by political
winds--that a finer subject--of the modern order, belonging to our own
time and epoch--the understanding of man could hardly conceive: angels
might, perhaps, but not men, sirs, not men."

"Who painted it?" said Mr. Powderell, much impressed.

"It is a proof before the letter, Mr. Powderell--the painter is not
known," answered Trumbull, with a certain gaspingness in his last
words, after which he pursed up his lips and stared round him.

"I'll bid a pound!" said Mr. Powderell, in a tone of resolved emotion,
as of a man ready to put himself in the breach.  Whether from awe or
pity, nobody raised the price on him.

Next came two Dutch prints which Mr. Toller had been eager for, and
after he had secured them he went away.  Other prints, and afterwards
some paintings, were sold to leading Middlemarchers who had come with a
special desire for them, and there was a more active movement of the
audience in and out; some, who had bought what they wanted, going away,
others coming in either quite newly or from a temporary visit to the
refreshments which were spread under the marquee on the lawn.  It was
this marquee that Mr. Bambridge was bent on buying, and he appeared to
like looking inside it frequently, as a foretaste of its possession.
On the last occasion of his return from it he was observed to bring
with him a new companion, a stranger to Mr. Trumbull and every one
else, whose appearance, however, led to the supposition that he might
be a relative of the horse-dealer's--also "given to indulgence."  His
large whiskers, imposing swagger, and swing of the leg, made him a
striking figure; but his suit of black, rather shabby at the edges,
caused the prejudicial inference that he was not able to afford himself
as much indulgence as he liked.

"Who is it you've picked up, Bam?" said Mr. Horrock, aside.

"Ask him yourself," returned Mr. Bambridge.  "He said he'd just turned
in from the road."

Mr. Horrock eyed the stranger, who was leaning back against his stick
with one hand, using his toothpick with the other, and looking about
him with a certain restlessness apparently under the silence imposed on
him by circumstances.

At length the "Supper at Emmaus" was brought forward, to Will's immense
relief, for he was getting so tired of the proceedings that he had
drawn back a little and leaned his shoulder against the wall just
behind the auctioneer.  He now came forward again, and his eye caught
the conspicuous stranger, who, rather to his surprise, was staring at
him markedly.  But Will was immediately appealed to by Mr. Trumbull.

"Yes, Mr. Ladislaw, yes; this interests you as a connoiss_ure_, I
think.  It is some pleasure," the auctioneer went on with a rising
fervor, "to have a picture like this to show to a company of ladies and
gentlemen--a picture worth any sum to an individual whose means were on
a level with his judgment.  It is a painting of the Italian school--by
the celebrated Guydo, the greatest painter in the world, the chief of
the Old Masters, as they are called--I take it, because they were up
to a thing or two beyond most of us--in possession of secrets now lost
to the bulk of mankind.  Let me tell you, gentlemen, I have seen a
great many pictures by the Old Masters, and they are not all up to this
mark--some of them are darker than you might like and not family
subjects.  But here is a Guydo--the frame alone is worth pounds--which
any lady might be proud to hang up--a suitable thing for what we call a
refectory in a charitable institution, if any gentleman of the
Corporation wished to show his munifi_cence_. Turn it a little, sir?
yes.  Joseph, turn it a little towards Mr. Ladislaw--Mr. Ladislaw,
having been abroad, understands the merit of these things, you observe."

All eyes were for a moment turned towards Will, who said, coolly, "Five
pounds."  The auctioneer burst out in deep remonstrance.

"Ah!  Mr. Ladislaw! the frame alone is worth that.  Ladies and
gentlemen, for the credit of the town!  Suppose it should be discovered
hereafter that a gem of art has been amongst us in this town, and
nobody in Middlemarch awake to it.  Five guineas--five seven-six--five
ten.  Still, ladies, still!  It is a gem, and 'Full many a gem,' as the
poet says, has been allowed to go at a nominal price because the public
knew no better, because it was offered in circles where there was--I
was going to say a low feeling, but no!--Six pounds--six guineas--a
Guydo of the first order going at six guineas--it is an insult to
religion, ladies; it touches us all as Christians, gentlemen, that a
subject like this should go at such a low figure--six pounds
ten--seven--"

The bidding was brisk, and Will continued to share in it, remembering
that Mrs. Bulstrode had a strong wish for the picture, and thinking
that he might stretch the price to twelve pounds.  But it was knocked
down to him at ten guineas, whereupon he pushed his way towards the
bow-window and went out.  He chose to go under the marquee to get a
glass of water, being hot and thirsty: it was empty of other visitors,
and he asked the woman in attendance to fetch him some fresh water; but
before she was well gone he was annoyed to see entering the florid
stranger who had stared at him.  It struck Will at this moment that the
man might be one of those political parasitic insects of the bloated
kind who had once or twice claimed acquaintance with him as having
heard him speak on the Reform question, and who might think of getting
a shilling by news.  In this light his person, already rather heating
to behold on a summer's day, appeared the more disagreeable; and Will,
half-seated on the elbow of a garden-chair, turned his eyes carefully
away from the comer.  But this signified little to our acquaintance Mr.
Raffles, who never hesitated to thrust himself on unwilling
observation, if it suited his purpose to do so.  He moved a step or two
till he was in front of Will, and said with full-mouthed haste, "Excuse
me, Mr. Ladislaw--was your mother's name Sarah Dunkirk?"

Will, starting to his feet, moved backward a step, frowning, and saying
with some fierceness, "Yes, sir, it was.  And what is that to you?"

It was in Will's nature that the first spark it threw out was a direct
answer of the question and a challenge of the consequences.  To have
said, "What is that to you?" in the first instance, would have seemed
like shuffling--as if he minded who knew anything about his origin!

Raffles on his side had not the same eagerness for a collision which
was implied in Ladislaw's threatening air.  The slim young fellow with
his girl's complexion looked like a tiger-cat ready to spring on him.
Under such circumstances Mr. Raffles's pleasure in annoying his company
was kept in abeyance.

"No offence, my good sir, no offence!  I only remember your mother--knew
her when she was a girl.  But it is your father that you feature,
sir.  I had the pleasure of seeing your father too.  Parents alive, Mr.
Ladislaw?"

"No!" thundered Will, in the same attitude as before.

"Should be glad to do you a service, Mr. Ladislaw--by Jove, I should!
Hope to meet again."

Hereupon Raffles, who had lifted his hat with the last words, turned
himself round with a swing of his leg and walked away.  Will looked
after him a moment, and could see that he did not re-enter the
auction-room, but appeared to be walking towards the road.  For an
instant he thought that he had been foolish not to let the man go on
talking;--but no! on the whole he preferred doing without knowledge
from that source.

Later in the evening, however, Raffles overtook him in the street, and
appearing either to have forgotten the roughness of his former
reception or to intend avenging it by a forgiving familiarity, greeted
him jovially and walked by his side, remarking at first on the
pleasantness of the town and neighborhood.  Will suspected that the man
had been drinking and was considering how to shake him off when Raffles
said--

"I've been abroad myself, Mr. Ladislaw--I've seen the world--used to
parley-vous a little.  It was at Boulogne I saw your father--a most
uncommon likeness you are of him, by Jove! mouth--nose--eyes--hair
turned off your brow just like his--a little in the foreign style.
John Bull doesn't do much of that.  But your father was very ill when I
saw him.  Lord, lord! hands you might see through.  You were a small
youngster then.  Did he get well?"

"No," said Will, curtly.

"Ah!  Well!  I've often wondered what became of your mother.  She ran
away from her friends when she was a young lass--a proud-spirited
lass, and pretty, by Jove!  I knew the reason why she ran away," said
Raffles, winking slowly as he looked sideways at Will.

"You know nothing dishonorable of her, sir," said Will, turning on him
rather savagely.  But Mr. Raffles just now was not sensitive to shades
of manner.

"Not a bit!" said he, tossing his head decisively "She was a little too
honorable to like her friends--that was it!"  Here Raffles again winked
slowly.  "Lord bless you, I knew all about 'em--a little in what you
may call the respectable thieving line--the high style of
receiving-house--none of your holes and corners--first-rate. Slap-up
shop, high profits and no mistake.  But Lord!  Sarah would have known
nothing about it--a dashing young lady she was--fine
boarding-school--fit for a lord's wife--only Archie Duncan threw it at
her out of spite, because she would have nothing to do with him.  And
so she ran away from the whole concern.  I travelled for 'em, sir, in a
gentlemanly way--at a high salary.  They didn't mind her running away
at first--godly folks, sir, very godly--and she was for the stage.  The
son was alive then, and the daughter was at a discount.  Hallo! here we
are at the Blue Bull.  What do you say, Mr. Ladislaw?--shall we turn in
and have a glass?"

"No, I must say good evening," said Will, dashing up a passage which
led into Lowick Gate, and almost running to get out of Raffles's reach.

He walked a long while on the Lowick road away from the town, glad of
the starlit darkness when it came.  He felt as if he had had dirt cast
on him amidst shouts of scorn.  There was this to confirm the fellow's
statement--that his mother never would tell him the reason why she had
run away from her family.

Well! what was he, Will Ladislaw, the worse, supposing the truth about
that family to be the ugliest?  His mother had braved hardship in order
to separate herself from it.  But if Dorothea's friends had known this
story--if the Chettams had known it--they would have had a fine color
to give their suspicions a welcome ground for thinking him unfit to
come near her.  However, let them suspect what they pleased, they would
find themselves in the wrong.  They would find out that the blood in
his veins was as free from the taint of meanness as theirs.

    "Inconsistencies," answered Imlac, "cannot both be right,
    but imputed to man they may both be true."--Rasselas.

The same night, when Mr. Bulstrode returned from a journey to Brassing
on business, his good wife met him in the entrance-hall and drew him
into his private sitting-room.

"Nicholas," she said, fixing her honest eyes upon him anxiously, "there
has been such a disagreeable man here asking for you--it has made me
quite uncomfortable."

"What kind of man, my dear," said Mr. Bulstrode, dreadfully certain of
the answer.

"A red-faced man with large whiskers, and most impudent in his manner.
He declared he was an old friend of yours, and said you would be sorry
not to see him.  He wanted to wait for you here, but I told him he
could see you at the Bank to-morrow morning.  Most impudent he
was!--stared at me, and said his friend Nick had luck in wives.  I
don't believe he would have gone away, if Blucher had not happened to
break his chain and come running round on the gravel--for I was in the
garden; so I said, 'You'd better go away--the dog is very fierce, and I
can't hold him.'  Do you really know anything of such a man?"

"I believe I know who he is, my dear," said Mr. Bulstrode, in his usual
subdued voice, "an unfortunate dissolute wretch, whom I helped too much
in days gone by.  However, I presume you will not be troubled by him
again.  He will probably come to the Bank--to beg, doubtless."

No more was said on the subject until the next day, when Mr. Bulstrode
had returned from the town and was dressing for dinner.  His wife, not
sure that he was come home, looked into his dressing-room and saw him
with his coat and cravat off, leaning one arm on a chest of drawers and
staring absently at the ground.  He started nervously and looked up as
she entered.

"You look very ill, Nicholas.  Is there anything the matter?"

"I have a good deal of pain in my head," said Mr. Bulstrode, who was so
frequently ailing that his wife was always ready to believe in this
cause of depression.

"Sit down and let me sponge it with vinegar."

Physically Mr. Bulstrode did not want the vinegar, but morally the
affectionate attention soothed him.  Though always polite, it was his
habit to receive such services with marital coolness, as his wife's
duty.  But to-day, while she was bending over him, he said, "You are
very good, Harriet," in a tone which had something new in it to her
ear; she did not know exactly what the novelty was, but her woman's
solicitude shaped itself into a darting thought that he might be going
to have an illness.

"Has anything worried you?" she said.  "Did that man come to you at the
Bank?"

"Yes; it was as I had supposed.  He is a man who at one time might have
done better.  But he has sunk into a drunken debauched creature."

"Is he quite gone away?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, anxiously but for certain
reasons she refrained from adding, "It was very disagreeable to hear
him calling himself a friend of yours."  At that moment she would not
have liked to say anything which implied her habitual consciousness
that her husband's earlier connections were not quite on a level with
her own.  Not that she knew much about them.  That her husband had at
first been employed in a bank, that he had afterwards entered into what
he called city business and gained a fortune before he was
three-and-thirty, that he had married a widow who was much older than
himself--a Dissenter, and in other ways probably of that
disadvantageous quality usually perceptible in a first wife if inquired
into with the dispassionate judgment of a second--was almost as much as
she had cared to learn beyond the glimpses which Mr. Bulstrode's
narrative occasionally gave of his early bent towards religion, his
inclination to be a preacher, and his association with missionary and
philanthropic efforts.  She believed in him as an excellent man whose
piety carried a peculiar eminence in belonging to a layman, whose
influence had turned her own mind toward seriousness, and whose share
of perishable good had been the means of raising her own position.  But
she also liked to think that it was well in every sense for Mr.
Bulstrode to have won the hand of Harriet Vincy; whose family was
undeniable in a Middlemarch light--a better light surely than any
thrown in London thoroughfares or dissenting chapel-yards. The
unreformed provincial mind distrusted London; and while true religion
was everywhere saving, honest Mrs. Bulstrode was convinced that to be
saved in the Church was more respectable.  She so much wished to ignore
towards others that her husband had ever been a London Dissenter, that
she liked to keep it out of sight even in talking to him.  He was quite
aware of this; indeed in some respects he was rather afraid of this
ingenuous wife, whose imitative piety and native worldliness were
equally sincere, who had nothing to be ashamed of, and whom he had
married out of a thorough inclination still subsisting.  But his fears
were such as belong to a man who cares to maintain his recognized
supremacy: the loss of high consideration from his wife, as from every
one else who did not clearly hate him out of enmity to the truth, would
be as the beginning of death to him.  When she said--

"Is he quite gone away?"

"Oh, I trust so," he answered, with an effort to throw as much sober
unconcern into his tone as possible!

But in truth Mr. Bulstrode was very far from a state of quiet trust.
In the interview at the Bank, Raffles had made it evident that his
eagerness to torment was almost as strong in him as any other greed.
He had frankly said that he had turned out of the way to come to
Middlemarch, just to look about him and see whether the neighborhood
would suit him to live in.  He had certainly had a few debts to pay
more than he expected, but the two hundred pounds were not gone yet: a
cool five-and-twenty would suffice him to go away with for the present.
What he had wanted chiefly was to see his friend Nick and family, and
know all about the prosperity of a man to whom he was so much attached.
By-and-by he might come back for a longer stay.  This time Raffles
declined to be "seen off the premises," as he expressed it--declined to
quit Middlemarch under Bulstrode's eyes.  He meant to go by coach the
next day--if he chose.

Bulstrode felt himself helpless.  Neither threats nor coaxing could
avail: he could not count on any persistent fear nor on any promise.
On the contrary, he felt a cold certainty at his heart that
Raffles--unless providence sent death to hinder him--would come back
to Middlemarch before long.  And that certainty was a terror.

It was not that he was in danger of legal punishment or of beggary: he
was in danger only of seeing disclosed to the judgment of his neighbors
and the mournful perception of his wife certain facts of his past life
which would render him an object of scorn and an opprobrium of the
religion with which he had diligently associated himself.  The terror
of being judged sharpens the memory: it sends an inevitable glare over
that long-unvisited past which has been habitually recalled only in
general phrases.  Even without memory, the life is bound into one by a
zone of dependence in growth and decay; but intense memory forces a man
to own his blameworthy past.  With memory set smarting like a reopened
wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn
preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose
from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing
shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.

Into this second life Bulstrode's past had now risen, only the
pleasures of it seeming to have lost their quality.  Night and day,
without interruption save of brief sleep which only wove retrospect and
fear into a fantastic present, he felt the scenes of his earlier life
coming between him and everything else, as obstinately as when we look
through the window from a lighted room, the objects we turn our backs
on are still before us, instead of the grass and the trees. The
successive events inward and outward were there in one view: though
each might be dwelt on in turn, the rest still kept their hold in the
consciousness.

Once more he saw himself the young banker's clerk, with an agreeable
person, as clever in figures as he was fluent in speech and fond of
theological definition: an eminent though young member of a Calvinistic
dissenting church at Highbury, having had striking experience in
conviction of sin and sense of pardon.  Again he heard himself called
for as Brother Bulstrode in prayer meetings, speaking on religious
platforms, preaching in private houses.  Again he felt himself thinking
of the ministry as possibly his vocation, and inclined towards
missionary labor.  That was the happiest time of his life: that was the
spot he would have chosen now to awake in and find the rest a dream.
The people among whom Brother Bulstrode was distinguished were very
few, but they were very near to him, and stirred his satisfaction the
more; his power stretched through a narrow space, but he felt its
effect the more intensely.  He believed without effort in the peculiar
work of grace within him, and in the signs that God intended him for
special instrumentality.

Then came the moment of transition; it was with the sense of promotion
he had when he, an orphan educated at a commercial charity-school, was
invited to a fine villa belonging to Mr. Dunkirk, the richest man in
the congregation.  Soon he became an intimate there, honored for his
piety by the wife, marked out for his ability by the husband, whose
wealth was due to a flourishing city and west-end trade.  That was the
setting-in of a new current for his ambition, directing his prospects
of "instrumentality" towards the uniting of distinguished religious
gifts with successful business.

By-and-by came a decided external leading: a confidential subordinate
partner died, and nobody seemed to the principal so well fitted to fill
the severely felt vacancy as his young friend Bulstrode, if he would
become confidential accountant.  The offer was accepted.  The business
was a pawnbroker's, of the most magnificent sort both in extent and
profits; and on a short acquaintance with it Bulstrode became aware
that one source of magnificent profit was the easy reception of any
goods offered, without strict inquiry as to where they came from.  But
there was a branch house at the west end, and no pettiness or dinginess
to give suggestions of shame.

He remembered his first moments of shrinking.  They were private, and
were filled with arguments; some of these taking the form of prayer.
The business was established and had old roots; is it not one thing to
set up a new gin-palace and another to accept an investment in an old
one?  The profits made out of lost souls--where can the line be drawn
at which they begin in human transactions?  Was it not even God's way
of saving His chosen?  "Thou knowest,"--the young Bulstrode had said
then, as the older Bulstrode was saying now--"Thou knowest how loose
my soul sits from these things--how I view them all as implements for
tilling Thy garden rescued here and there from the wilderness."

Metaphors and precedents were not wanting; peculiar spiritual
experiences were not wanting which at last made the retention of his
position seem a service demanded of him: the vista of a fortune had
already opened itself, and Bulstrode's shrinking remained private.  Mr.
Dunkirk had never expected that there would be any shrinking at all: he
had never conceived that trade had anything to do with the scheme of
salvation.  And it was true that Bulstrode found himself carrying on
two distinct lives; his religious activity could not be incompatible
with his business as soon as he had argued himself into not feeling it
incompatible.

Mentally surrounded with that past again, Bulstrode had the same
pleas--indeed, the years had been perpetually spinning them into
intricate thickness, like masses of spider-web, padding the moral
sensibility; nay, as age made egoism more eager but less enjoying, his
soul had become more saturated with the belief that he did everything
for God's sake, being indifferent to it for his own.  And yet--if he
could be back in that far-off spot with his youthful poverty--why, then
he would choose to be a missionary.

But the train of causes in which he had locked himself went on.  There
was trouble in the fine villa at Highbury.  Years before, the only
daughter had run away, defied her parents, and gone on the stage; and
now the only boy died, and after a short time Mr. Dunkirk died also.
The wife, a simple pious woman, left with all the wealth in and out of
the magnificent trade, of which she never knew the precise nature, had
come to believe in Bulstrode, and innocently adore him as women often
adore their priest or "man-made" minister.  It was natural that after a
time marriage should have been thought of between them.  But Mrs.
Dunkirk had qualms and yearnings about her daughter, who had long been
regarded as lost both to God and her parents.  It was known that the
daughter had married, but she was utterly gone out of sight.  The
mother, having lost her boy, imagined a grandson, and wished in a
double sense to reclaim her daughter.  If she were found, there would
be a channel for property--perhaps a wide one--in the provision for
several grandchildren.  Efforts to find her must be made before Mrs.
Dunkirk would marry again.  Bulstrode concurred; but after
advertisement as well as other modes of inquiry had been tried, the
mother believed that her daughter was not to be found, and consented to
marry without reservation of property.

The daughter had been found; but only one man besides Bulstrode knew
it, and he was paid for keeping silence and carrying himself away.

That was the bare fact which Bulstrode was now forced to see in the
rigid outline with which acts present themselves onlookers.  But for
himself at that distant time, and even now in burning memory, the fact
was broken into little sequences, each justified as it came by
reasonings which seemed to prove it righteous.  Bulstrode's course up
to that time had, he thought, been sanctioned by remarkable
providences, appearing to point the way for him to be the agent in
making the best use of a large property and withdrawing it from
perversion.  Death and other striking dispositions, such as feminine
trustfulness, had come; and Bulstrode would have adopted Cromwell's
words--"Do you call these bare events?  The Lord pity you!"  The
events were comparatively small, but the essential condition was
there--namely, that they were in favor of his own ends.  It was easy
for him to settle what was due from him to others by inquiring what
were God's intentions with regard to himself.  Could it be for God's
service that this fortune should in any considerable proportion go to a
young woman and her husband who were given up to the lightest pursuits,
and might scatter it abroad in triviality--people who seemed to lie
outside the path of remarkable providences?  Bulstrode had never said
to himself beforehand, "The daughter shall not be found"--nevertheless
when the moment came he kept her existence hidden; and when other
moments followed, he soothed the mother with consolation in the
probability that the unhappy young woman might be no more.

There were hours in which Bulstrode felt that his action was
unrighteous; but how could he go back?  He had mental exercises, called
himself nought, laid hold on redemption, and went on in his course of
instrumentality.  And after five years Death again came to widen his
path, by taking away his wife.  He did gradually withdraw his capital,
but he did not make the sacrifices requisite to put an end to the
business, which was carried on for thirteen years afterwards before it
finally collapsed.  Meanwhile Nicholas Bulstrode had used his hundred
thousand discreetly, and was become provincially, solidly important--a
banker, a Churchman, a public benefactor; also a sleeping partner in
trading concerns, in which his ability was directed to economy in the
raw material, as in the case of the dyes which rotted Mr. Vincy's silk.
And now, when this respectability had lasted undisturbed for nearly
thirty years--when all that preceded it had long lain benumbed in the
consciousness--that past had risen and immersed his thought as if with
the terrible irruption of a new sense overburthening the feeble being.

Meanwhile, in his conversation with Raffles, he had learned something
momentous, something which entered actively into the struggle of his
longings and terrors.  There, he thought, lay an opening towards
spiritual, perhaps towards material rescue.

The spiritual kind of rescue was a genuine need with him.  There may be
coarse hypocrites, who consciously affect beliefs and emotions for the
sake of gulling the world, but Bulstrode was not one of them.  He was
simply a man whose desires had been stronger than his theoretic
beliefs, and who had gradually explained the gratification of his
desires into satisfactory agreement with those beliefs.  If this be
hypocrisy, it is a process which shows itself occasionally in us all,
to whatever confession we belong, and whether we believe in the future
perfection of our race or in the nearest date fixed for the end of the
world; whether we regard the earth as a putrefying nidus for a saved
remnant, including ourselves, or have a passionate belief in the
solidarity of mankind.

The service he could do to the cause of religion had been through life
the ground he alleged to himself for his choice of action: it had been
the motive which he had poured out in his prayers.  Who would use money
and position better than he meant to use them?  Who could surpass him
in self-abhorrence and exaltation of God's cause?  And to Mr. Bulstrode
God's cause was something distinct from his own rectitude of conduct:
it enforced a discrimination of God's enemies, who were to be used
merely as instruments, and whom it would be as well if possible to keep
out of money and consequent influence.  Also, profitable investments in
trades where the power of the prince of this world showed its most
active devices, became sanctified by a right application of the profits
in the hands of God's servant.

This implicit reasoning is essentially no more peculiar to evangelical
belief than the use of wide phrases for narrow motives is peculiar to
Englishmen.  There is no general doctrine which is not capable of
eating out our morality if unchecked by the deep-seated habit of direct
fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men.

But a man who believes in something else than his own greed, has
necessarily a conscience or standard to which he more or less adapts
himself.  Bulstrode's standard had been his serviceableness to God's
cause: "I am sinful and nought--a vessel to be consecrated by use--but
use me!"--had been the mould into which he had constrained his immense
need of being something important and predominating.  And now had come
a moment in which that mould seemed in danger of being broken and
utterly cast away.

What if the acts he had reconciled himself to because they made him a
stronger instrument of the divine glory, were to become the pretext of
the scoffer, and a darkening of that glory?  If this were to be the
ruling of Providence, he was cast out from the temple as one who had
brought unclean offerings.

He had long poured out utterances of repentance.  But today a
repentance had come which was of a bitterer flavor, and a threatening
Providence urged him to a kind of propitiation which was not simply a
doctrinal transaction.  The divine tribunal had changed its aspect for
him; self-prostration was no longer enough, and he must bring
restitution in his hand.  It was really before his God that Bulstrode
was about to attempt such restitution as seemed possible: a great dread
had seized his susceptible frame, and the scorching approach of shame
wrought in him a new spiritual need.  Night and day, while the
resurgent threatening past was making a conscience within him, he was
thinking by what means he could recover peace and trust--by what
sacrifice he could stay the rod.  His belief in these moments of dread
was, that if he spontaneously did something right, God would save him
from the consequences of wrong-doing. For religion can only change when
the emotions which fill it are changed; and the religion of personal
fear remains nearly at the level of the savage.

He had seen Raffles actually going away on the Brassing coach, and this
was a temporary relief; it removed the pressure of an immediate dread,
but did not put an end to the spiritual conflict and the need to win
protection.  At last he came to a difficult resolve, and wrote a letter
to Will Ladislaw, begging him to be at the Shrubs that evening for a
private interview at nine o'clock. Will had felt no particular surprise
at the request, and connected it with some new notions about the
"Pioneer;" but when he was shown into Mr. Bulstrode's private room, he
was struck with the painfully worn look on the banker's face, and was
going to say, "Are you ill?" when, checking himself in that abruptness,
he only inquired after Mrs. Bulstrode, and her satisfaction with the
picture bought for her.

"Thank you, she is quite satisfied; she has gone out with her daughters
this evening.  I begged you to come, Mr. Ladislaw, because I have a
communication of a very private--indeed, I will say, of a sacredly
confidential nature, which I desire to make to you.  Nothing, I dare
say, has been farther from your thoughts than that there had been
important ties in the past which could connect your history with mine."

Will felt something like an electric shock.  He was already in a state
of keen sensitiveness and hardly allayed agitation on the subject of
ties in the past, and his presentiments were not agreeable.  It seemed
like the fluctuations of a dream--as if the action begun by that loud
bloated stranger were being carried on by this pale-eyed sickly looking
piece of respectability, whose subdued tone and glib formality of
speech were at this moment almost as repulsive to him as their
remembered contrast.  He answered, with a marked change of color--

"No, indeed, nothing."

"You see before you, Mr. Ladislaw, a man who is deeply stricken.  But
for the urgency of conscience and the knowledge that I am before the
bar of One who seeth not as man seeth, I should be under no compulsion
to make the disclosure which has been my object in asking you to come
here to-night. So far as human laws go, you have no claim on me
whatever."

Will was even more uncomfortable than wondering.  Mr. Bulstrode had
paused, leaning his head on his hand, and looking at the floor.  But he
now fixed his examining glance on Will and said--

"I am told that your mother's name was Sarah Dunkirk, and that she ran
away from her friends to go on the stage.  Also, that your father was
at one time much emaciated by illness.  May I ask if you can confirm
these statements?"

"Yes, they are all true," said Will, struck with the order in which an
inquiry had come, that might have been expected to be preliminary to
the banker's previous hints.  But Mr. Bulstrode had to-night followed
the order of his emotions; he entertained no doubt that the opportunity
for restitution had come, and he had an overpowering impulse towards
the penitential expression by which he was deprecating chastisement.

"Do you know any particulars of your mother's family?" he continued.

"No; she never liked to speak of them.  She was a very generous,
honorable woman," said Will, almost angrily.

"I do not wish to allege anything against her.  Did she never mention
her mother to you at all?"

"I have heard her say that she thought her mother did not know the
reason of her running away.  She said 'poor mother' in a pitying tone."

"That mother became my wife," said Bulstrode, and then paused a moment
before he added, "you have a claim on me, Mr. Ladislaw: as I said
before, not a legal claim, but one which my conscience recognizes.  I
was enriched by that marriage--a result which would probably not have
taken place--certainly not to the same extent--if your grandmother
could have discovered her daughter.  That daughter, I gather, is no
longer living!"

"No," said Will, feeling suspicion and repugnance rising so strongly
within him, that without quite knowing what he did, he took his hat
from the floor and stood up.  The impulse within him was to reject the
disclosed connection.

"Pray be seated, Mr. Ladislaw," said Bulstrode, anxiously.  "Doubtless
you are startled by the suddenness of this discovery.  But I entreat
your patience with one who is already bowed down by inward trial."

Will reseated himself, feeling some pity which was half contempt for
this voluntary self-abasement of an elderly man.

"It is my wish, Mr. Ladislaw, to make amends for the deprivation which
befell your mother.  I know that you are without fortune, and I wish to
supply you adequately from a store which would have probably already
been yours had your grandmother been certain of your mother's existence
and been able to find her."

Mr. Bulstrode paused.  He felt that he was performing a striking piece
of scrupulosity in the judgment of his auditor, and a penitential act
in the eyes of God.  He had no clew to the state of Will Ladislaw's
mind, smarting as it was from the clear hints of Raffles, and with its
natural quickness in construction stimulated by the expectation of
discoveries which he would have been glad to conjure back into
darkness.  Will made no answer for several moments, till Mr. Bulstrode,
who at the end of his speech had cast his eyes on the floor, now raised
them with an examining glance, which Will met fully, saying--

"I suppose you did know of my mother's existence, and knew where she
might have been found."

Bulstrode shrank--there was a visible quivering in his face and hands.
He was totally unprepared to have his advances met in this way, or to
find himself urged into more revelation than he had beforehand set down
as needful.  But at that moment he dared not tell a lie, and he felt
suddenly uncertain of his ground which he had trodden with some
confidence before.

"I will not deny that you conjecture rightly," he answered, with a
faltering in his tone.  "And I wish to make atonement to you as the one
still remaining who has suffered a loss through me.  You enter, I
trust, into my purpose, Mr. Ladislaw, which has a reference to higher
than merely human claims, and as I have already said, is entirely
independent of any legal compulsion.  I am ready to narrow my own
resources and the prospects of my family by binding myself to allow you
five hundred pounds yearly during my life, and to leave you a
proportional capital at my death--nay, to do still more, if more should
be definitely necessary to any laudable project on your part."  Mr.
Bulstrode had gone on to particulars in the expectation that these
would work strongly on Ladislaw, and merge other feelings in grateful
acceptance.

But Will was looking as stubborn as possible, with his lip pouting and
his fingers in his side-pockets. He was not in the least touched, and
said firmly,--

"Before I make any reply to your proposition, Mr. Bulstrode, I must beg
you to answer a question or two.  Were you connected with the business
by which that fortune you speak of was originally made?"

Mr. Bulstrode's thought was, "Raffles has told him."  How could he
refuse to answer when he had volunteered what drew forth the question?
He answered, "Yes."

"And was that business--or was it not--a thoroughly dishonorable
one--nay, one that, if its nature had been made public, might have
ranked those concerned in it with thieves and convicts?"

Will's tone had a cutting bitterness: he was moved to put his question
as nakedly as he could.

Bulstrode reddened with irrepressible anger.  He had been prepared for
a scene of self-abasement, but his intense pride and his habit of
supremacy overpowered penitence, and even dread, when this young man,
whom he had meant to benefit, turned on him with the air of a judge.

"The business was established before I became connected with it, sir;
nor is it for you to institute an inquiry of that kind," he answered,
not raising his voice, but speaking with quick defiantness.

"Yes, it is," said Will, starting up again with his hat in his hand.
"It is eminently mine to ask such questions, when I have to decide
whether I will have transactions with you and accept your money.  My
unblemished honor is important to me.  It is important to me to have no
stain on my birth and connections.  And now I find there is a stain
which I can't help.  My mother felt it, and tried to keep as clear of
it as she could, and so will I.  You shall keep your ill-gotten money.
If I had any fortune of my own, I would willingly pay it to any one who
could disprove what you have told me.  What I have to thank you for is
that you kept the money till now, when I can refuse it.  It ought to
lie with a man's self that he is a gentleman.  Good-night, sir."

Bulstrode was going to speak, but Will, with determined quickness, was
out of the room in an instant, and in another the hall-door had closed
behind him.  He was too strongly possessed with passionate rebellion
against this inherited blot which had been thrust on his knowledge to
reflect at present whether he had not been too hard on Bulstrode--too
arrogantly merciless towards a man of sixty, who was making efforts at
retrieval when time had rendered them vain.

No third person listening could have thoroughly understood the
impetuosity of Will's repulse or the bitterness of his words.  No one
but himself then knew how everything connected with the sentiment of
his own dignity had an immediate bearing for him on his relation to
Dorothea and to Mr. Casaubon's treatment of him.  And in the rush of
impulses by which he flung back that offer of Bulstrode's there was
mingled the sense that it would have been impossible for him ever to
tell Dorothea that he had accepted it.

As for Bulstrode--when Will was gone he suffered a violent reaction,
and wept like a woman.  It was the first time he had encountered an
open expression of scorn from any man higher than Raffles; and with
that scorn hurrying like venom through his system, there was no
sensibility left to consolations.  But the relief of weeping had to be
checked.  His wife and daughters soon came home from hearing the
address of an Oriental missionary, and were full of regret that papa
had not heard, in the first instance, the interesting things which they
tried to repeat to him.

Perhaps, through all other hidden thoughts, the one that breathed most
comfort was, that Will Ladislaw at least was not likely to publish what
had taken place that evening.

    "He was a squyer of lowe degre,
     That loved the king's daughter of Hungrie.
                                    --Old Romance.

Will Ladislaw's mind was now wholly bent on seeing Dorothea again, and
forthwith quitting Middlemarch.  The morning after his agitating scene
with Bulstrode he wrote a brief letter to her, saying that various
causes had detained him in the neighborhood longer than he had
expected, and asking her permission to call again at Lowick at some
hour which she would mention on the earliest possible day, he being
anxious to depart, but unwilling to do so until she had granted him an
interview.  He left the letter at the office, ordering the messenger to
carry it to Lowick Manor, and wait for an answer.

Ladislaw felt the awkwardness of asking for more last words.  His
former farewell had been made in the hearing of Sir James Chettam, and
had been announced as final even to the butler.  It is certainly trying
to a man's dignity to reappear when he is not expected to do so: a
first farewell has pathos in it, but to come back for a second lends an
opening to comedy, and it was possible even that there might be bitter
sneers afloat about Will's motives for lingering.  Still it was on the
whole more satisfactory to his feeling to take the directest means of
seeing Dorothea, than to use any device which might give an air of
chance to a meeting of which he wished her to understand that it was
what he earnestly sought.  When he had parted from her before, he had
been in ignorance of facts which gave a new aspect to the relation
between them, and made a more absolute severance than he had then
believed in.  He knew nothing of Dorothea's private fortune, and being
little used to reflect on such matters, took it for granted that
according to Mr. Casaubon's arrangement marriage to him, Will Ladislaw,
would mean that she consented to be penniless.  That was not what he
could wish for even in his secret heart, or even if she had been ready
to meet such hard contrast for his sake.  And then, too, there was the
fresh smart of that disclosure about his mother's family, which if
known would be an added reason why Dorothea's friends should look down
upon him as utterly below her.  The secret hope that after some years
he might come back with the sense that he had at least a personal value
equal to her wealth, seemed now the dreamy continuation of a dream.
This change would surely justify him in asking Dorothea to receive him
once more.

But Dorothea on that morning was not at home to receive Will's note.
In consequence of a letter from her uncle announcing his intention to
be at home in a week, she had driven first to Freshitt to carry the
news, meaning to go on to the Grange to deliver some orders with which
her uncle had intrusted her--thinking, as he said, "a little mental
occupation of this sort good for a widow."

If Will Ladislaw could have overheard some of the talk at Freshitt that
morning, he would have felt all his suppositions confirmed as to the
readiness of certain people to sneer at his lingering in the
neighborhood.  Sir James, indeed, though much relieved concerning
Dorothea, had been on the watch to learn Ladislaw's movements, and had
an instructed informant in Mr. Standish, who was necessarily in his
confidence on this matter.  That Ladislaw had stayed in Middlemarch
nearly two months after he had declared that he was going immediately,
was a fact to embitter Sir James's suspicions, or at least to justify
his aversion to a "young fellow" whom he represented to himself as
slight, volatile, and likely enough to show such recklessness as
naturally went along with a position unriveted by family ties or a
strict profession.  But he had just heard something from Standish
which, while it justified these surmises about Will, offered a means of
nullifying all danger with regard to Dorothea.

Unwonted circumstances may make us all rather unlike ourselves: there
are conditions under which the most majestic person is obliged to
sneeze, and our emotions are liable to be acted on in the same
incongruous manner.  Good Sir James was this morning so far unlike
himself that he was irritably anxious to say something to Dorothea on a
subject which he usually avoided as if it had been a matter of shame to
them both.  He could not use Celia as a medium, because he did not
choose that she should know the kind of gossip he had in his mind; and
before Dorothea happened to arrive he had been trying to imagine how,
with his shyness and unready tongue, he could ever manage to introduce
his communication.  Her unexpected presence brought him to utter
hopelessness in his own power of saying anything unpleasant; but
desperation suggested a resource; he sent the groom on an unsaddled
horse across the park with a pencilled note to Mrs. Cadwallader, who
already knew the gossip, and would think it no compromise of herself to
repeat it as often as required.

Dorothea was detained on the good pretext that Mr. Garth, whom she
wanted to see, was expected at the hall within the hour, and she was
still talking to Caleb on the gravel when Sir James, on the watch for
the rector's wife, saw her coming and met her with the needful hints.

"Enough!  I understand,"--said Mrs. Cadwallader.  "You shall be
innocent.  I am such a blackamoor that I cannot smirch myself."

"I don't mean that it's of any consequence," said Sir James, disliking
that Mrs. Cadwallader should understand too much.  "Only it is
desirable that Dorothea should know there are reasons why she should
not receive him again; and I really can't say so to her.  It will come
lightly from you."

It came very lightly indeed.  When Dorothea quitted Caleb and turned to
meet them, it appeared that Mrs. Cadwallader had stepped across the
park by the merest chance in the world, just to chat with Celia in a
matronly way about the baby.  And so Mr. Brooke was coming back?
Delightful!--coming back, it was to be hoped, quite cured of
Parliamentary fever and pioneering.  Apropos of the "Pioneer"--somebody
had prophesied that it would soon be like a dying dolphin, and turn all
colors for want of knowing how to help itself, because Mr. Brooke's
protege, the brilliant young Ladislaw, was gone or going.  Had Sir
James heard that?

The three were walking along the gravel slowly, and Sir James, turning
aside to whip a shrub, said he had heard something of that sort.

"All false!" said Mrs. Cadwallader.  "He is not gone, or going,
apparently; the 'Pioneer' keeps its color, and Mr. Orlando Ladislaw is
making a sad dark-blue scandal by warbling continually with your Mr.
Lydgate's wife, who they tell me is as pretty as pretty can be.  It
seems nobody ever goes into the house without finding this young
gentleman lying on the rug or warbling at the piano.  But the people in
manufacturing towns are always disreputable."

"You began by saying that one report was false, Mrs. Cadwallader, and I
believe this is false too," said Dorothea, with indignant energy; "at
least, I feel sure it is a misrepresentation.  I will not hear any evil
spoken of Mr. Ladislaw; he has already suffered too much injustice."

Dorothea when thoroughly moved cared little what any one thought of her
feelings; and even if she had been able to reflect, she would have held
it petty to keep silence at injurious words about Will from fear of
being herself misunderstood.  Her face was flushed and her lip trembled.

Sir James, glancing at her, repented of his stratagem; but Mrs.
Cadwallader, equal to all occasions, spread the palms of her hands
outward and said--"Heaven grant it, my dear!--I mean that all bad tales
about anybody may be false.  But it is a pity that young Lydgate should
have married one of these Middlemarch girls.  Considering he's a son of
somebody, he might have got a woman with good blood in her veins, and
not too young, who would have put up with his profession.  There's
Clara Harfager, for instance, whose friends don't know what to do with
her; and she has a portion.  Then we might have had her among us.
However!--it's no use being wise for other people.  Where is Celia?
Pray let us go in."

"I am going on immediately to Tipton," said Dorothea, rather haughtily.
"Good-by."

Sir James could say nothing as he accompanied her to the carriage.  He
was altogether discontented with the result of a contrivance which had
cost him some secret humiliation beforehand.

Dorothea drove along between the berried hedgerows and the shorn
corn-fields, not seeing or hearing anything around.  The tears came and
rolled down her cheeks, but she did not know it.  The world, it seemed,
was turning ugly and hateful, and there was no place for her
trustfulness.  "It is not true--it is not true!" was the voice within
her that she listened to; but all the while a remembrance to which
there had always clung a vague uneasiness would thrust itself on her
attention--the remembrance of that day when she had found Will Ladislaw
with Mrs. Lydgate, and had heard his voice accompanied by the piano.

"He said he would never do anything that I disapproved--I wish I could
have told him that I disapproved of that," said poor Dorothea,
inwardly, feeling a strange alternation between anger with Will and the
passionate defence of him.  "They all try to blacken him before me; but
I will care for no pain, if he is not to blame.  I always believed he
was good."--These were her last thoughts before she felt that the
carriage was passing under the archway of the lodge-gate at the Grange,
when she hurriedly pressed her handkerchief to her face and began to
think of her errands.  The coachman begged leave to take out the horses
for half an hour as there was something wrong with a shoe; and
Dorothea, having the sense that she was going to rest, took off her
gloves and bonnet, while she was leaning against a statue in the
entrance-hall, and talking to the housekeeper.  At last she said--

"I must stay here a little, Mrs. Kell.  I will go into the library and
write you some memoranda from my uncle's letter, if you will open the
shutters for me."

"The shutters are open, madam," said Mrs. Kell, following Dorothea, who
had walked along as she spoke.  "Mr. Ladislaw is there, looking for
something."

(Will had come to fetch a portfolio of his own sketches which he had
missed in the act of packing his movables, and did not choose to leave
behind.)

Dorothea's heart seemed to turn over as if it had had a blow, but she
was not perceptibly checked: in truth, the sense that Will was there
was for the moment all-satisfying to her, like the sight of something
precious that one has lost.  When she reached the door she said to Mrs.
Kell--

"Go in first, and tell him that I am here."

Will had found his portfolio, and had laid it on the table at the far
end of the room, to turn over the sketches and please himself by
looking at the memorable piece of art which had a relation to nature
too mysterious for Dorothea.  He was smiling at it still, and shaking
the sketches into order with the thought that he might find a letter
from her awaiting him at Middlemarch, when Mrs. Kell close to his elbow
said--

"Mrs. Casaubon is coming in, sir."

Will turned round quickly, and the next moment Dorothea was entering.
As Mrs. Kell closed the door behind her they met: each was looking at
the other, and consciousness was overflowed by something that
suppressed utterance.  It was not confusion that kept them silent, for
they both felt that parting was near, and there is no shamefacedness in
a sad parting.

She moved automatically towards her uncle's chair against the
writing-table, and Will, after drawing it out a little for her, went a
few paces off and stood opposite to her.

"Pray sit down," said Dorothea, crossing her hands on her lap; "I am
very glad you were here."  Will thought that her face looked just as it
did when she first shook hands with him in Rome; for her widow's cap,
fixed in her bonnet, had gone off with it, and he could see that she
had lately been shedding tears.  But the mixture of anger in her
agitation had vanished at the sight of him; she had been used, when
they were face to face, always to feel confidence and the happy freedom
which comes with mutual understanding, and how could other people's
words hinder that effect on a sudden?  Let the music which can take
possession of our frame and fill the air with joy for us, sound once
more--what does it signify that we heard it found fault with in its
absence?

"I have sent a letter to Lowick Manor to-day, asking leave to see you,"
said Will, seating himself opposite to her.  "I am going away
immediately, and I could not go without speaking to you again."

"I thought we had parted when you came to Lowick many weeks ago--you
thought you were going then," said Dorothea, her voice trembling a
little.

"Yes; but I was in ignorance then of things which I know now--things
which have altered my feelings about the future.  When I saw you
before, I was dreaming that I might come back some day.  I don't think
I ever shall--now."  Will paused here.

"You wished me to know the reasons?" said Dorothea, timidly.

"Yes," said Will, impetuously, shaking his head backward, and looking
away from her with irritation in his face.  "Of course I must wish it.
I have been grossly insulted in your eyes and in the eyes of others.
There has been a mean implication against my character.  I wish you to
know that under no circumstances would I have lowered myself by--under
no circumstances would I have given men the chance of saying that I
sought money under the pretext of seeking--something else.  There was
no need of other safeguard against me--the safeguard of wealth was
enough."

Will rose from his chair with the last word and went--he hardly knew
where; but it was to the projecting window nearest him, which had been
open as now about the same season a year ago, when he and Dorothea had
stood within it and talked together.  Her whole heart was going out at
this moment in sympathy with Will's indignation: she only wanted to
convince him that she had never done him injustice, and he seemed to
have turned away from her as if she too had been part of the unfriendly
world.

"It would be very unkind of you to suppose that I ever attributed any
meanness to you," she began.  Then in her ardent way, wanting to plead
with him, she moved from her chair and went in front of him to her old
place in the window, saying, "Do you suppose that I ever disbelieved in
you?"

When Will saw her there, he gave a start and moved backward out of the
window, without meeting her glance.  Dorothea was hurt by this movement
following up the previous anger of his tone.  She was ready to say that
it was as hard on her as on him, and that she was helpless; but those
strange particulars of their relation which neither of them could
explicitly mention kept her always in dread of saying too much.  At
this moment she had no belief that Will would in any case have wanted
to marry her, and she feared using words which might imply such a
belief.  She only said earnestly, recurring to his last word--

"I am sure no safeguard was ever needed against you."

Will did not answer.  In the stormy fluctuation of his feelings these
words of hers seemed to him cruelly neutral, and he looked pale and
miserable after his angry outburst.  He went to the table and fastened
up his portfolio, while Dorothea looked at him from the distance.  They
were wasting these last moments together in wretched silence.  What
could he say, since what had got obstinately uppermost in his mind was
the passionate love for her which he forbade himself to utter?  What
could she say, since she might offer him no help--since she was forced
to keep the money that ought to have been his?--since to-day he seemed
not to respond as he used to do to her thorough trust and liking?

But Will at last turned away from his portfolio and approached the
window again.

"I must go," he said, with that peculiar look of the eyes which
sometimes accompanies bitter feeling, as if they had been tired and
burned with gazing too close at a light.

"What shall you do in life?" said Dorothea, timidly.  "Have your
intentions remained just the same as when we said good-by before?"

"Yes," said Will, in a tone that seemed to waive the subject as
uninteresting.  "I shall work away at the first thing that offers.  I
suppose one gets a habit of doing without happiness or hope."

"Oh, what sad words!" said Dorothea, with a dangerous tendency to sob.
Then trying to smile, she added, "We used to agree that we were alike
in speaking too strongly."

"I have not spoken too strongly now," said Will, leaning back against
the angle of the wall.  "There are certain things which a man can only
go through once in his life; and he must know some time or other that
the best is over with him.  This experience has happened to me while I
am very young--that is all.  What I care more for than I can ever care
for anything else is absolutely forbidden to me--I don't mean merely
by being out of my reach, but forbidden me, even if it were within my
reach, by my own pride and honor--by everything I respect myself for.
Of course I shall go on living as a man might do who had seen heaven in
a trance."

Will paused, imagining that it would be impossible for Dorothea to
misunderstand this; indeed he felt that he was contradicting himself
and offending against his self-approval in speaking to her so plainly;
but still--it could not be fairly called wooing a woman to tell her
that he would never woo her.  It must be admitted to be a ghostly kind
of wooing.

But Dorothea's mind was rapidly going over the past with quite another
vision than his.  The thought that she herself might be what Will most
cared for did throb through her an instant, but then came doubt: the
memory of the little they had lived through together turned pale and
shrank before the memory which suggested how much fuller might have
been the intercourse between Will and some one else with whom he had
had constant companionship.  Everything he had said might refer to that
other relation, and whatever had passed between him and herself was
thoroughly explained by what she had always regarded as their simple
friendship and the cruel obstruction thrust upon it by her husband's
injurious act.  Dorothea stood silent, with her eyes cast down
dreamily, while images crowded upon her which left the sickening
certainty that Will was referring to Mrs. Lydgate.  But why sickening?
He wanted her to know that here too his conduct should be above
suspicion.

Will was not surprised at her silence.  His mind also was tumultuously
busy while he watched her, and he was feeling rather wildly that
something must happen to hinder their parting--some miracle, clearly
nothing in their own deliberate speech.  Yet, after all, had she any
love for him?--he could not pretend to himself that he would rather
believe her to be without that pain.  He could not deny that a secret
longing for the assurance that she loved him was at the root of all his
words.

Neither of them knew how long they stood in that way.  Dorothea was
raising her eyes, and was about to speak, when the door opened and her
footman came to say--

"The horses are ready, madam, whenever you like to start."

"Presently," said Dorothea.  Then turning to Will, she said, "I have
some memoranda to write for the housekeeper."

"I must go," said Will, when the door had closed again--advancing
towards her.  "The day after to-morrow I shall leave Middlemarch."

"You have acted in every way rightly," said Dorothea, in a low tone,
feeling a pressure at her heart which made it difficult to speak.

She put out her hand, and Will took it for an instant without speaking,
for her words had seemed to him cruelly cold and unlike herself.  Their
eyes met, but there was discontent in his, and in hers there was only
sadness.  He turned away and took his portfolio under his arm.

"I have never done you injustice.  Please remember me," said Dorothea,
repressing a rising sob.

"Why should you say that?" said Will, with irritation.  "As if I were
not in danger of forgetting everything else."

He had really a movement of anger against her at that moment, and it
impelled him to go away without pause.  It was all one flash to
Dorothea--his last words--his distant bow to her as he reached the
door--the sense that he was no longer there.  She sank into the chair,
and for a few moments sat like a statue, while images and emotions were
hurrying upon her.  Joy came first, in spite of the threatening train
behind it--joy in the impression that it was really herself whom Will
loved and was renouncing, that there was really no other love less
permissible, more blameworthy, which honor was hurrying him away from.
They were parted all the same, but--Dorothea drew a deep breath and
felt her strength return--she could think of him unrestrainedly.  At
that moment the parting was easy to bear: the first sense of loving and
being loved excluded sorrow.  It was as if some hard icy pressure had
melted, and her consciousness had room to expand: her past was come
back to her with larger interpretation.  The joy was not the
less--perhaps it was the more complete just then--because of the
irrevocable parting; for there was no reproach, no contemptuous wonder
to imagine in any eye or from any lips.  He had acted so as to defy
reproach, and make wonder respectful.

Any one watching her might have seen that there was a fortifying
thought within her.  Just as when inventive power is working with glad
ease some small claim on the attention is fully met as if it were only
a cranny opened to the sunlight, it was easy now for Dorothea to write
her memoranda.  She spoke her last words to the housekeeper in cheerful
tones, and when she seated herself in the carriage her eyes were bright
and her cheeks blooming under the dismal bonnet.  She threw back the
heavy "weepers," and looked before her, wondering which road Will had
taken.  It was in her nature to be proud that he was blameless, and
through all her feelings there ran this vein--"I was right to defend
him."

The coachman was used to drive his grays at a good pace, Mr. Casaubon
being unenjoying and impatient in everything away from his desk, and
wanting to get to the end of all journeys; and Dorothea was now bowled
along quickly.  Driving was pleasant, for rain in the night had laid
the dust, and the blue sky looked far off, away from the region of the
great clouds that sailed in masses.  The earth looked like a happy
place under the vast heavens, and Dorothea was wishing that she might
overtake Will and see him once more.

After a turn of the road, there he was with the portfolio under his
arm; but the next moment she was passing him while he raised his hat,
and she felt a pang at being seated there in a sort of exaltation,
leaving him behind.  She could not look back at him.  It was as if a
crowd of indifferent objects had thrust them asunder, and forced them
along different paths, taking them farther and farther away from each
other, and making it useless to look back.  She could no more make any
sign that would seem to say, "Need we part?" than she could stop the
carriage to wait for him.  Nay, what a world of reasons crowded upon
her against any movement of her thought towards a future that might
reverse the decision of this day!

"I only wish I had known before--I wish he knew--then we could be quite
happy in thinking of each other, though we are forever parted.  And if
I could but have given him the money, and made things easier for
him!"--were the longings that came back the most persistently.  And
yet, so heavily did the world weigh on her in spite of her independent
energy, that with this idea of Will as in need of such help and at a
disadvantage with the world, there came always the vision of that
unfittingness of any closer relation between them which lay in the
opinion of every one connected with her.  She felt to the full all the
imperativeness of the motives which urged Will's conduct.  How could he
dream of her defying the barrier that her husband had placed between
them?--how could she ever say to herself that she would defy it?

Will's certainty as the carriage grew smaller in the distance, had much
more bitterness in it.  Very slight matters were enough to gall him in
his sensitive mood, and the sight of Dorothea driving past him while he
felt himself plodding along as a poor devil seeking a position in a
world which in his present temper offered him little that he coveted,
made his conduct seem a mere matter of necessity, and took away the
sustainment of resolve.  After all, he had no assurance that she loved
him: could any man pretend that he was simply glad in such a case to
have the suffering all on his own side?

That evening Will spent with the Lydgates; the next evening he was gone.

BOOK VII.

TWO TEMPTATIONS.

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

completion: Captain Lydgate, Lydgate's cousin and son of Sir Godwin, comes to visit. The captain takes Rosamond out riding. Lydgate forbids her to go riding again because of her pregnancy. Rosamond defies him; she suffers an accident and miscarries. Lydgate gives a bill of sale on his furniture to his creditor as security for his debt. Rosamond wants to ask her father for money, but Lydgate forbids it. She tries to persuade him to sell everything and leave Middlemarch, but he refuses. He asks her to choose some of their dishes and her jewelry to return. She sullenly places all of her jewelry in front of Lydgate and tells him to choose everything himself. Lydgate relents and tells her to keep her jewelry. Gossip concerning the codicil to Casaubon's will spreads throughout Middlemarch. Rosamond mentions it to Lydgate, who knows more than most. He advises Rosamond not to mention it to Will. Will knows nothing of the codicil until Rosamond defies her husband's advice and teases him about it. She is surprised to find that Will knew nothing of it. She is unhappy with her marriage, and she has already unsuccessfully tried to get money from her father. Bulstrode hires Will to attend an auction and bid for a painting that Mrs. Bulstrode wants. Will meets John Raffles there. Raffles says he knew Will's mother and that her parents made a fortune by selling stolen goods. Bulstrode returns home from work, and his wife tells him that a strange, disagreeable man came to their house. He knows Raffles has returned to Middlemarch and fears losing his wife's love and respect. Raffles visits him at the bank the next day and continues to blackmail him. In his youth, Bulstrode met Mr. Dunkirk, a pawnbroker, at church and befriended him. He became a partner in the business and slowly discovered that they were selling stolen goods. He did not resign, however, and continued to behave publicly as a deeply religious man. Dunkirk died, leaving his wife a wealthy woman. Her son died. She wanted to marry Bulstrode, but she asked him to locate her missing daughter before she would consent. Bulstrode hired Raffles to find her. The daughter, Sarah Ladislaw, and her small child, Will, were found, but Bulstrode bribed Raffles to keep silent. He married Mrs. Dunkirk and received all of her wealth upon her death. Bulstrode requests a meeting with Will. He tells Will that he married his grandmother and that he became wealthy as a result. He says that he was unable to find Will's mother. He offers to give Will a fair share of the inheritance that would have come to him if Bulstrode had located Will's mother. Will states that he doesn't believe Bulstrode's assertion that he didn't find his mother. Bulstrode admits his guilt and says he wants to atone for it. Will asks if Bulstrode's wealth derives from the thievery Raffles hinted at. Bulstrode replies that he entered the business after it had already become established. Will refuses Bulstrode's tainted money, because he doesn't want to do something that would disappoint Dorothea.