ed no wrong to keep Raffles at a distance, but Mr. Bulstrode shrank from the direct falsehood of denying true statements. It was one thing to look back on forgiven sins, nay, to explain questionable conformity to lax customs, and another to enter deliberately on the necessity of falsehood. But since Bulstrode did not speak, Raffles ran on, by way of using time to the utmost. "I've not had such fine luck as you, by Jove! Things went confoundedly with me in New York; those Yankees are cool hands, and a man of gentlemanly feelings has no chance with them. I married when I came back-a nice woman in the tobacco trade-very fond of me-but the trade was restricted, as we say. She had been settled there a good many years by a friend; but there was a son too much in the case. Josh and I never hit it off. However, I made the most of the position, and I've always taken my glass in good company. It's been all on the square with me; I'm as open as the day. You won't take it ill of me that I didn't look you up before; I've got a complaint that makes me a little dilatory. I thought you were trading and praying away in London still, and didn't find you there. But you see I was sent to you, Nickperhaps for a blessing to both of us. cant. Mr. Raffles ended with a jocose snuffle: no man felt his intellect more superior to religious And if the cunning which calculates on the meanest feelings in men could be called intellect, he had his share, for under the blurting, rallying tone with which he spoke to Bulstrode there was an evident selection of statements, as if they had been so many moves at chess. Meanwhile Bulstrode had determined on his move, and he said, with gathered resolution: "No, I have one hundred," said Bulstrode, feeling the immediate riddance too great a relief to be rejected on the ground of future uncertainties. "I will forward you the other if you will mention an address.' "No, I'll wait here till you bring it," said Raffles. I'll take a stroll, and have a snack, and you'll be back by that time." Mr. Bulstrode's sickly body, shattered by the agitations he had gone through since the last evening, made him feel abjectly in the power of this loud invulnerable man. At that moment he snatched at a temporary repose to be won on any terms. He was rising to do what Raffles suggested, when the latter said, lifting up his finger as if with a sudden recollection: "I did have another look after Sarah again, though I didn't tell you; I'd a tender conscience about that pretty young woman. I didn't find her, but I found out her husband's name, and I made a note of it. But, hang it, I lost my pocket-book. However, if I heard it I should know it again. I've got my faculties as if I was in my prime, but names wear out, by Jove! Sometimes I'm no better than a confounded tax-paper before the names are filled in. However, if I hear of her and her family, you shall know, Nick. You'd like to do something for her, now she's your step-daughter." "Doubtless," said Mr. Bulstrode, with the usual steady look of his light gray eyes; "though that might reduce my power of assisting you." As he walked out of the room Raffles winked slowly at his back, and then turned toward the window to watch the banker riding away—virtually at his command. His lips first curled with a smile, and then opened with a short triumphant laugh. "You will do well to reflect, Mr. Raffles, that "But what the deuce was the name ?" he presit is possible for a man to overreach himself in ently said, half aloud, scratching his head, and the effort to secure undue advantage. Although wrinkling his brows horizontally. He had not I am not in any way bound to you, I am willing really cared or thought about this point of forto supply you with a regular annuity-in quar-getfulness until it occurred to him in his inventerly payments-so long as you fulfill a promise to remain at a distance from this neighborhood. It is in your power to choose. If you insist on remaining here, even for a short time, you will get nothing from me. I shall decline to know you." 66 "Ha, ha!" said Raffles, with an affected explosion, that reminds me of a droll dog of a thief who declined to know the constable." "Your allusions are lost on me, Sir," said Bulstrode, with white heat; "the law has no hold on me either through your agency or any other." "You can't understand a joke, my good fellow. I only meant that I should never decline to know you. But let us be serious. Your quarterly payment won't quite suit me. I like my freedom." tion of annoyances for Bulstrode. "It began with L; it was almost all l's, I fancy," he went on, with a sense that he was getting hold of the slippery name. But the hold was too slight, and he soon got tired of this mental chase; for few men were more impatient of private occupation or more in need of making themselves continually heard than Mr. Raffles. He preferred using his time in pleasant conversation with the bailiff and the housekeeper, from whom he gathered as much as he wanted to know about Mr. Bulstrode's position in Middlemarch. After all, however, there was a dull space of time which needed relieving with bread and cheese and ale, and when he was seated alone with these resources in the wainscoted parlor, he suddenly slapped his knee, and exclaimed, "Ladislaw!" That action of memory which he had tried to set going, and had abandoned in despair, had suddenly completed itself without Here Raffles rose and stalked once or twice up and down the room, swinging his leg, and assuming an air of masterly meditation. At last he stopped opposite Bulstrode, and said, "I'll tell you what! Give us a couple of hundreds-conscious effort-a common experience, agreea, come, that's modest-and I'll go away-honor bright!-pick up my portmanteau and go away. But I shall not give up my liberty for a dirty annuity. I shall come and go where I like. Perhaps it may suit me to stay away, and correspond with a friend; perhaps not. Have you the money with you?" ble as a completed sneeze, even if the name remembered is of no value. Raffles immediately took out his pocket-book, and wrote down the name, not because he expected to use it, but merely for the sake of not being at a loss if he ever did happen to want it. He was not going to tell Bulstrode; there was no actual good in telling, and to a mind like that of Mr. Raffles | coach, relieving Mr. Bulstrode's eyes of an ugly there is always probable good in a secret. black spot on the landscape at Stone Court, but not relieving him of the dread that the black spot might reappear and become inseparable even from the vision of his hearth. He was satisfied with his present success, and by three o'clock that day he had taken up his portmanteau at the turnpike and mounted the BOOK VI. THE WIDOW AND THE WIFE. CHAPTER LIV. "Negli occhi porta la mia donna Amore; Per che si fa gentil ciò ch'ella mira: E d' ogni suo difetto allor sospira: Nasce nel core a chi parlar la sente; pointment, and in her quiet, unemphatic way shot a needle-arrow of sarcasm. "What will you do at Lowick, Dodo? You say yourself there is nothing to be done there : every body is so clean and well off, it makes you quite melancholy. And here you have been so happy, going all about Tipton with Mr. Garth into the worst back-yards. And now uncle is abroad, you and Mr. Garth can have it all your own way; and I am sure James does every thing you tell him." "I shall often come here, and I shall see how baby grows all the better," said Dorothea. "But you will never see him washed," said Celia: "and that is quite the best part of the day. She was almost pouting: it did seem to her very hard in Dodo to go away from the baby when she might stay. By that delightful morning when the hay-ricks at Stone Court were scenting the air quite impartially, as if Mr. Raffles had been a guest worthy of finest incense, Dorothea had again taken up her abode at Lowick Manor. After three months "Dear Kitty, I will come and stay all night Freshitt had become rather oppressive: to sit on purpose," said Dorothea; "but I want to be like a model for Saint Catherine looking rapt-alone now, and in my own home. I wish to urously at Celia's baby would not do for many know the Farebrothers better, and to talk to Mr. hours in the day, and to remain in that moment- Farebrother about what there is to be done in ous babe's presence with persistent disregard was Middlemarch." a course that could not have been tolerated in a childless sister. Dorothea would have been capable of carrying baby joyfully for a mile if there had been need, and of loving it the more tenderly for that labor; but to an aunt who does not recognize her infant nephew as Bouddha, and has nothing to do for him but to admire, his behavior is apt to appear monotonous, and the interest of watching him exhaustible. This possibility was quite hidden from Celia, who felt that Dorothea's childless widowhood fell in quite prettily with the birth of little Arthur (baby was named after Mr. Brooke). "Dodo is just the creature not to mind about having any thing of her own-children or any thing!" said Celia to her husband. "And if she had had a baby, it never could have been such a dear as Arthur. Could it, James ?" "Not if it had been like Casaubon," said Sir James, conscious of some indirectness in his answer, and of holding a strictly private opinion as to the perfections of his first-born. "No! just imagine! Really it was a mercy," said Celia; "and I think it is very nice for Dodo to be a widow. She can be just as fond of our baby as if it were her own, and she can have as many notions of her own as she likes." Dorothea's native strength of will was no longer all converted into resolute submission. She had a great yearning to be at Lowick, and was simply determined to go, not feeling bound to tell all her reasons. But every one around her disapproved. Sir James was much pained, and offered that they should all migrate to Cheltenham for a few months with the sacred ark, otherwise called a cradle: at that period a man could hardly know what to propose if Cheltenham were rejected. The Dowager Lady Chettam, just returned from a visit to her daughter in town, wished, at least, that Mrs. Vigo should be written to, and invited to accept the office of companion to Mrs. Casaubon; it was not credible that Dorothea as a young widow would think of living alone in the house at Lowick. Mrs. Vigo had been reader and secretary to royal personages, and in point of knowledge and sentiments even Dorothea could have nothing to object to her. Mrs. Cadwallader said, privately, "You will certainly go mad in that house alone, my dear. You will see visions. We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as other people call them by. To be sure, for younger sons and women who have. no money, it is a sort of provision to go mad: they are taken care of then. But you must not "But what should we have been then? We run into that. I dare say you are a little bored must have been something else," said Celia, ob-here with our good dowager; but think what a jecting to so laborious a flight of imagination. "I like her better as she is." "It is a pity she was not a queen," said the devout Sir James. bore you might become yourself to your fellow-creatures if you were always playing tragHence, when she found that Dorothea was edy queen and taking things sublimely. Sitting making arrangements for her final departure to alone in that library at Lowick, you may fancy Lowick, Celia raised her eyebrows with disap-yourself ruling the weather; you must get a few people round you who wouldn't believe | life, and carrying on her thoughts as if they were you if you told them. That is a good lowering a speech to be heard by her husband. Then she medicine." "I never called every thing by the same name that all the people about me did," said Dorothea, stoutly. "But I suppose you have found out your mistake, my dear," said Mrs. Cadwallader, "and that is a proof of sanity." Dorothea was aware of the sting, but it did not hurt her. "No," she said, "I still think that the greater part of the world is mistaken about many things. Surely one may be sane and yet think so, since the greater part of the world has often had to come round from its opinion.' Mrs. Cadwallader said no more on that point to Dorothea, but to her husband she remarked: "It will be well for her to marry again as soon as it is proper, if one could get her among the right people. Of course the Chettams would not wish it. But I see clearly a husband is the best thing to keep her in order. If we were not so poor I would invite Lord Triton. He will be marquis some day, and there is no denying that she would make a good marchioness: she looks handsomer than ever in her mourning.' 66 My dear Elinor, do let the poor woman alone. Such contrivances are of no use," said the easy rector. lingered in the library, and could not be at rest till she had carefully ranged all the note-books as she imagined that he would wish to see them, in orderly sequence. The pity which had been the restraining compelling motive in her life with him still clung about his image, even while she remonstrated with him in indignant thought and told him that he was unjust. One little act of hers may perhaps be smiled at as superstitious. The Synoptical Tabulation, for the use of Mrs. Casaubon, she carefully inclosed and sealed, writing within the envelope, "I could not use it. Do you not see now that I could not submit my soul to yours by working hopelessly at what I have no belief in?-Dorothea." Then she deposited the paper in her own desk. That silent colloquy was perhaps only the more earnest because underneath and through it all there was always the deep longing which had really determined her to come to Lowick. The longing was to see Will Ladislaw. She did not know any good that could come of their meeting: she was helpless; her hands had been tied from making up to him for any unfairness in his lot. But her soul thirsted to see him. How could it be otherwise? If a princess in the days of enchantment had seen a four-footed creature from among those which live in herds come to her once and again with a human gaze which rested upon her with choice and beseeching, what would she think of in her journeying, what would she "No use? How are matches made, except by bringing men and women together? And it is a shame that her uncle should have run away and shut up the Grange just now. There ought to be plenty of eligible matches invited to Fresh-look for when the herds passed her? Surely for itt and the Grange. Lord Triton is precisely the man: full of plans for making the people happy in a soft-headed sort of way. That would just suit Mrs. Casaubon. "Let Mrs. Casaubon choose for herself, Eli nor. the gaze which had found her, and which she would know again. Life would be no better than candle-light tinsel and daylight rubbish if our spirits were not touched by what has been, to issues of longing and constancy. It was true that Dorothea wanted to know the Farebrothers better, and especially to talk to the new rector, but also true that, remembering what Lydgate had told her about Will Ladislaw and little Miss Noble, she counted on Will's coming to Lowick to see the Farebrother family. The very first Sunday, before she entered the church, she saw him as she had seen him the last time she was "For Heaven's sake don't touch on that top-there, alone in the clergyman's pew; but when ic, Elinor! It is a very sore point with Sir she entered his figure was gone. James. He would be deeply offended if you entered on it to him unnecessarily." "That is the nonsense you wise men talk! How can she choose if she has no variety to choose from? A woman's choice usually means taking the only man she can get. Mark my words, Humphrey. If her friends don't exert themselves, there will be a worse business than the Casaubon business yet.' "I have never entered on it," said Mrs. Cadwallader, opening her hands. "Celia told me all about the will at the beginning, without any asking of mine." "Yes, yes; but they want the thing hushed up, and I understand that the young fellow is going out of the neighborhood." Mrs. Cadwallader said nothing, but gave her husband three significant nods, with a very sarcastic expression in her dark eyes. Dorothea quietly persisted in spite of remonstrance and persuasion. So by the end of June the shutters were all opened at Lowick Manor, and the morning gazed calmly into the library, shining on the rows of note-books as it shines on the weary waste planted with huge stones, the mute memorial of a forgotten faith; and the evening laden with roses entered silently into the blue-green boudoir where Dorothea chose oftenest to sit. At first she walked into every room, questioning the eighteen months of her married In the week-days when she went to see the ladies at the Rectory, she listened in vain for some word that they might let fall about Will; but it seemed to her that Mrs. Farebrother talked of every one else in the neighborhood and out of it. "Probably some of Mr. Farebrother's Middlemarch hearers may follow him to Lowick sometimes. Do you not think so?" said Dorothea, rather despising herself for having a secret motive in asking the question. "If they are wise, they will, Mrs. Casaubon," said the old lady. "I see that you set a right value on my son's preaching. His grandfather on my side was an excellent clergyman, but his father was in the law-most exemplary and honest nevertheless, which is a reason for our never being rich. They say Fortune is a woman and capricious. But sometimes she is a good woman, and gives to those who merit, which has been the case with you, Mrs. Casaubon, who have given a living to my son." Mrs. Farebrother recurred to her knitting with her. Mrs. Cadwallader's maid says there's a lord coming who is to marry her, when the mourning's over. a dignified satisfaction in her neat little effort at oratory, but this was not what Dorothea wanted to hear. Poor thing! she did not even know whether Will Ladislaw was still at Middlemarch, There were not many moments for Will to and there was no one whom she dared to ask, walk about with his hat in his hand before unless it were Lydgate. But just now she could Dorothea entered. The meeting was very difnot see Lydgate without sending for him or go-ferent from that first meeting in Rome when ing to seek him. Perhaps Will Ladislaw, having heard of that strange ban against him left by Mr. Casaubon, had felt it better that he and she should not meet again, and perhaps she was wrong to wish for a meeting that others might find many good reasons against. Still, "I do wish it" came at the end of those wise reflections as naturally as a sob after holding the breath. And the meeting did happen, but in a formal way quite unexpected by her. Will had been embarrassed and Dorothea calm. This time he felt miserable but determined, while she was in a state of agitation which could not be hidden. Just outside the door she had felt that this longed-for meeting was after all too difficult, and when she saw Will advancing toward her, the deep blush which was rare in her came with painful suddenness. Neither of them knew how it was, but neither of them spoke. She gave her hand for a moment, and then they One morning, about eleven, Dorothea was seat- went to sit down near the window, she on one ed in her boudoir with a map of the land attached settee and he on another opposite. Will was peto the manor and other papers before her, which culiarly uneasy: it seemed to him not like Dorwere to help her in making an exact statement othea that the mere fact of her being a widow for herself of her income and affairs. She had should cause such a change in her manner of not yet applied herself to her work, but was seat-receiving him; and he knew of no other condied with her hands folded on her lap, looking out tion which could have affected their previous realong the avenue of limes to the distant fields.lation to each other-except that, as his imagiEvery leaf was at rest in the sunshine, the famil-nation at once told him, her friends might have iar scene was changeless, and seemed to repre- been poisoning her mind with their suspicions of sent the prospect of her life, full of motiveless him. ease-motiveless, if her own energy could not seek out reasons for ardent action. The widow's cap of those times made an oval frame for the face, and had a crown standing up; the dress was an experiment in the utmost laying on of crape; but this heavy solemnity of clothing made her face look all the younger, with its recovered bloom, and the sweet, inquiring candor of her eyes. Her reverie was broken by Tantripp, who came to say that Mr. Ladislaw was below, and begged permission to see madam if it were not too early. "I hope I have not presumed too much in calling," said Will; "I could not bear to leave the neighborhood and begin a new life without seeing you to say good-by.' "Presumed? Surely not. I should have thought it unkind of you not to wish to see me," said Dorothea, her habit of speaking with perfect genuineness asserting itself through all her uncertainty and agitation. "Are you going away immediately?" 66 'Very soon, I think. I intend to go to town and eat my dinners as a barrister, since, they say, that is the preparation for all public busi"I will see him," said Dorothea, rising im- ness. There will be a great deal of political mediately. "Let him be shown into the draw-work to be done by-and-by, and I mean to try ing-room." and do some of it. Other men have managed to win an honorable position for themselves without family or money.' The drawing-room was the most neutral room in the house to her-the one least associated with the trials of her married life: the damask matched the wood-work, which was all white and gold; there were two tall mirrors, and tables with nothing on them-in brief, it was a room where you had no reason for sitting in one place rather than in another. It was below the boudoir, and had also a bow-window looking out on the avenue. But when Pratt showed Will Ladislaw into it the window was open; and a winged visitor, buzzing in and out now and then without minding the furniture, made the room look less formal and uninhabited. "Glad to see you here again, Sir," said Pratt, lingering to adjust a blind. "I am only come to say good-by, Pratt," said Will, who wished even the butler to know that he was too proud to hang about Mrs. Casaubon, now she was a rich widow. 66 "And that will make it all the more honorable," said Dorothea, ardently. Besides, you have so many talents. I have heard from my uncle how well you speak in public, so that every one is sorry when you leave off, and how clearly you can explain things. And you care that justice should be done to every one. I am so glad. When we were in Rome I thought you only cared for poetry and art, and the things that adorn life for us who are well off. But now I know you think about the rest of the world." While she was speaking Dorothea had lost her personal embarrassment, and had become like her former self. She looked at Will with a direct glance, full of delighted confidence. 66 You approve of my going away for years, then, and never coming here again till I have made myself of some mark in the world ?" said Will, trying hard to reconcile the utmost pride with the utmost effort to get an expression of strong feeling from Dorothea. "Very sorry to hear it, Sir," said Pratt, retiring. Of course, as a servant who was to be told nothing, he knew the fact of which Ladislaw was still ignorant, and had drawn his inferences; in- She was not aware how long it was before she deed, had not differed from his betrothed Tan- answered. She had turned her head, and was tripp when she said, "Your master was as jeal-looking out of the window on the rose-bushes, ous as a fiend-and no reason. Madam would which seemed to have in them the summers of look higher than Mr. Ladislaw, else I don't know all the years when Will would be away. This "I thought you would like to cherish her memory I thought" - Dorothea broke off an instant, her imagination suddenly warning her away from Aunt Julia's history-"you would surely like to have the miniature as a family memorial." 66 was not judicious behavior. But Dorothea never | consoling to have one's own likeness. It would thought of studying her manners: she thought be more consoling if others wanted to have it. only of bowing to a sad necessity which divided her from Will. Those first words of his about his intentions had seemed to make every thing clear to her: he knew, she supposed, all about Mr. Casaubon's final conduct in relation to him, and it had come to him with the same sort of shock as to herself. He had never felt more than friendship for her-had never had any thing in his mind to justify what she felt to be her husband's outrage on the feelings of both and that friendship he still felt. Something which may be called an inward silent sob had gone on in Dorothea before she said, with a pure voice, just trembling in the last words as if only from its liquid flexibility, "Yes, it must be right for you to do as you say. I shall be very happy when I hear that you have made your value felt. But you must have patience. It will perhaps be a long while." Will never quite knew how it was that he saved himself from falling down at her feet when the "long while" came forth with its gentle tremor. He used to say that the horrible hue and surface of her crape dress was most likely the sufficient controlling force. He sat still, however, and only said, 66 I shall never hear from you. And you will forget all about me.' Why should I have that, when I have nothing else? A man with only a portmanteau for his stowage must keep his memorials in his head." Will spoke at random: he was merely venting his petulance; it was a little too exasperating to have his grandmother's portrait offered him at that moment. But to Dorothea's feeling his words had a peculiar sting. She rose and said, with a touch of indignation as well as hauteur, "You are much the happier of us two, Mr. Ladislaw, to have nothing." Will was startled. Whatever the words might be, the tone seemed like a dismissal; and quitting his leaning posture, he walked a little way toward her. Their eyes met, but with a strange questioning gravity. Something was keeping their minds aloof, and each was left to conjecture what was in the other. Will had really never thought of himself as having a claim of inheritance on the property which was held by Dorothea, and would have required a narrative to make him understand her present feeling. "I never felt it a misfortune to have nothing till now," he said. "But poverty may be as bad as leprosy, if it divides us from what we most care for. The words cut Dorothea to the heart, and made her relent. She answered in a tone of sad fellowship: "Sorrow comes in so many ways. Two years ago I had no notion of that-I mean of the unexpected way in which trouble comes, and ties our hands, and makes us silent when we long to speak. I used to despise women a little for not shaping their lives more, and doing better things. I was very fond of doing as I liked, but I have almost given it up,” she ended, smiling playfully. "Good God!" Will burst out, passionately, rising, with his hat still in his hand, and walking away to a marble table, where he suddenly turned and leaned his back against it. The blood had mounted to his face and neck, and he looked almost angry. It had seemed to him as if they were like two creatures slowly turning to marble in each other's presence, while their hearts were conscious and their eyes were yearning. But there was no help for it. It should never be true of him that in this meeting to which he had "I have not given up doing as I like, but I come with bitter resolution he had ended by a can very seldom do it," said Will. He was confession which might be interpreted into ask-standing two yards from her with his mind full ing for her fortune. Moreover, it was actually of contradictory desires and resolves-desiring true that he was fearful of the effect which such some unmistakable proof that she loved him, and confessions might have on Dorothea herself. yet dreading the position into which such a proof might bring him. The thing one most longs for may be surrounded with conditions that would be intolerable." 66 At this moment Pratt entered and said, "Sir James Chettam is in the library, madam. She looked at him from that distance in some trouble, imagining that there might have been an offense in her words. But all the while there was a current of thought in her about his probable want of money, and the impossibility of her helping him. If her uncle had been at "Ask Sir James to come in here," said Dorohome, something might have been done through thea, immediately. It was as if the same elechim! It was this preoccupation with the hard-tric shock had passed through her and Will. ship of Will's wanting money, while she had Each of them felt proudly resistant, and neither what ought to have been his share, which led her looked at the other, while they awaited Sir to say, seeing that he remained silent and looked James's entrance. away from her, "I wonder whether you would like to have that miniature which hangs up stairs-I mean that beautiful miniature of your grandmother. I think it is not right for me to keep it, if you would wish to have it. It is wonderfully like you." "You are very good," said Will, irritably. "No; I don't mind about it. It is not very After shaking hands with Dorothea, he bowed as slightly as possible to Ladislaw, who repaid the slightness exactly, and then going toward Dorothea, said, "I must say good-by, Mrs. Casaubon; and probably for a long while." Dorothea put out her hand and said her goodby cordially. The sense that Sir James was depreciating Will, and behaving rudely to him, |