his head in Middlemarch, things look so black "I suppose the Bulstrodes will go and live abroad somewhere," said Mrs. Sprague. "That is what is generally done when there is any thing disgraceful in a family." And a most deadly blow it will be to Harriet," said Mrs. Plymdale. "If ever a woman was crushed, she will be. I pity her from my heart. And with all her faults, few women are better. From a girl she had the neatest ways, and was always good-hearted, and as open as the day. You might look into her drawers when you would always the same. And so she has brought up Kate and Ellen. You may think how hard it will be for her to go among foreigners." "The doctor says that is what he should recommend the Lydgates to do," said Mrs. Sprague. "He says Lydgate ought to have kept among the French." not suffering from bodily illness merely, but from something that afflicted his mind. He would not allow her to read to him, and scarcely to sit with him, alleging nervous susceptibility to sounds and movements; yet she suspected that in shutting himself up in his private room he wanted to be busy with his papers. Something, she felt sure, had happened. Perhaps it was some great loss of money; and she was kept in the dark. Not daring to question her husband, she said to Lydgate, on the fifth day after the meeting, when she had not left home except to go to church: "Mr. Lydgate, pray be open with me: I like to know the truth. Has any thing happened to Mr. Bulstrode ?" "Some little nervous shock," said Lydgate, evasively. He felt that it was not for him to make the painful revelation. "But what brought it on?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, looking directly at him with her large, dark eyes. "There is often something poisonous in the air of public rooms," said Lydgate. "Strong men can stand it, but it tells on people in propor,"tion to the delicacy of their systems. It is often impossible to account for the precise moment of an attack-or, rather, to say why the strength gives way at a particular moment. "That would suit her well enough, I dare say,' said Mrs. Plymdale; "there is that kind of lightness about her. But she got that from her mother; she never got it from her aunt Bulstrode, who always gave her good advice, and, to my knowledge, would rather have had her marry else-swer. where." Mrs. Plymdale was in a situation which caused her some complication of feeling. There had been not only her intimacy with Mrs. Bulstrode, but also a profitable business relation of the great Plymdale dyeing-house with Mr. Bulstrode, which on the one hand would have inclined her to desire that the mildest view of his character should be the true one, but on the other made her the more afraid of seeming to palliate his culpability. Again, the late alliance of her family with the Tollers had brought her in connection with the best circle, which gratified her in every direction except in the inclination to those serious views which she believed to be the best in another sense. The sharp little woman's conscience was somewhat troubled in the adjustment of these opposing 66 bests, ," and of her griefs and satisfactions under late events, which were likely to humble those who needed humbling, but also to fall heavily on her old friend whose faults she would have preferred seeing on a background of prosperity. Poor Mrs. Bulstrode, meanwhile, had been no further shaken by the on-coming tread of calamity than in the busier stirring of that secret uneasiness which had always been present in her since the last visit of Raffles to The Shrubs. That the hateful man had come ill to Stone Court, and that her husband had chosen to remain there and watch over him, she allowed to be explained by the fact that Raffles had been employed and aided in earlier days, and that this made a tie of benevolence toward him in his degraded helplessness; and she had been since then innocently cheered by her husband's more hopeful speech about his own health and ability to continue his attention to business. The calm was disturbed when Lydgate had brought him home ill from the meeting, and, in spite of comforting assurances during the next few days, she cried in private from the conviction that her husband was R Mrs. Bulstrode was not satisfied with this anThere remained in her the belief that some calamity had befallen her husband, of which she was to be kept in ignorance; and it was in her nature strongly to object to such concealment. She begged leave for her daughters to sit with their father, and drove into the town to pay some visits, conjecturing that if any thing were known to have gone wrong in Mr. Bulstrode's affairs, she would see or hear some sign of it. She called on Mrs. Thesiger, who was not at home, and then drove to Mrs. Hackbutt's, on the other side of the church-yard. Mrs. Hackbutt saw her coming from an up-stairs window, and remembering her former alarm lest she should meet Mrs. Bulstrode, felt almost bound in consistency to send word that she was not at home; but against that there was a sudden, strong desire within her for the excitement of an interview in which she was quite determined not to make the slightest allusion to what was in her mind. Hence Mrs. Bulstrode was shown into the drawing-room, and Mrs. Hackbutt went to her, with more tightness of lip and rubbing of hands than was usually observable in her, these being precautions adopted against freedom of speech. She was resolved not to ask how Mr. Bulstrode was. "I have not been any where except to church for nearly a week," said Mrs. Bulstrode, after a few introductory remarks. "But Mr. Bulstrode was taken so ill at the meeting on Thursday that I have not liked to leave the house." Mrs. Hackbutt rubbed the back of one hand with the palm of the other held against her chest, and let her eyes ramble over the pattern on the rug. 66 "Was Mr. Hackbutt at the meeting ?" persevered Mrs. Bulstrode. "Yes, he was," said Mrs. Hackbutt, with the same attitude. "The land is to be bought by subscription, I believe." "God help you, Harriet! you know all." "Let us hope that there will be no more cases | the sight of her: he rose from his seat to meet of cholera to be buried in it," said Mrs. Bul- her, took her by the hand, and said, with his imstrode. "It is an awful visitation. But I al-pulsive rashness, ways think Middlemarch a very healthy spot. I suppose it is being used to it from a child; but I never saw the town I should like to live at better, and especially our end." "I'm sure I should be glad that you always should live at Middlemarch, Mrs. Bulstrode," said Mrs. Hackbutt, with a slight sigh. "Still, we must learn to resign ourselves, wherever our lot may be cast. Though I am sure there will always be people in this town who will wish you well. Mrs. Hackbutt longed to say, "If you take my advice you will part from your husband," but it seemed clear to her that the poor woman knew nothing of the thunder ready to bolt on her head, and she herself could do no more than prepare her a little. Mrs. Bulstrode felt suddenly rather chill and trembling: there was evidently something unusual behind this speech of Mrs. Hackbutt's; but though she had set out with the desire to be fully informed, she found herself unable now to pursue her brave purpose, and turning the conversation by an inquiry about the young Hackbutts, she soon took her leave, saying that she was going to see Mrs. Plymdale. On her way thither she tried to imagine that there might have been some unusually warm sparring at the meeting between Mr. Bulstrode and some of his frequent opponents—perhaps Mr. Hackbutt might have been one of them. That would account for every thing. That moment was perhaps worse than any which came after. It contained that concentrated experience which in great crises of emotion reveals the bias of a nature, and is prophetic of the ultimate act which will end an intermediate struggle. Without that memory of Raffles she might still have thought only of monetary ruin, but now along with her brother's look and words there darted into her mind the idea of some guilt in her husband-then, under the working of terror came the image of her husband exposed to disgraceand then, after an instant of scorching shame in which she felt only the eyes of the world, with one leap of her heart she was at his side in mournful but unreproaching fellowship with shame and isolation. All this went on within her in a mere flash of time—while she sank into the chair, and raised her eyes to her brother, who stood over her. "I know nothing, Walter. What is it?" she said, faintly. He told her every thing, very inartificially, in slow fragments, making her aware that the scandal went much beyond proof, especially as to the end of Raffles. "People will talk," he said. "Even if a man has been acquitted by a jury, they'll talk, and nod and wink-and as far as the world goes, a man might often as well be guilty as not. It's a breakdown blow, and it damages Lydgate as much as Bulstrode. I don't pretend to say what is the truth. I only wish we had never heard the name of either Bulstrode or Lydgate. You'd better have been a Vincy all your life, and so had Rosamond." Mrs. Bulstrode made no reply. "But you must bear up as well as you can, Harriet. People don't blame you. And I'll stand by you, whatever you make up your mind to do," said the brother, with rough but wellmeaning affectionateness. "Give me your arm to the carriage, Walter," said Mrs. Bulstrode. "I feel very weak." And when she got home she was obliged to say to her daughter, "I am not well, my dear; I must go and lie down. Attend to your papa. Leave me in quiet. I shall take no dinner.' But when she was in conversation with Mrs. Plymdale that comforting explanation seemed no longer tenable. "Selina" received her with a pathetic affectionateness and a disposition to give edifying answers on the commonest topics, which could hardly have reference to an ordinary quarrel of which the most important consequence was a perturbation of Mr. Bulstrode's health. Beforehand Mrs. Bulstrode had thought that she would sooner question Mrs. Plymdale than any one else; but she found to her surprise that an old friend is not always the person whom it is easiest to make a confidant of: there was the barrier of remembered communication under other circumstances -there was the dislike of being pitied and informed by one who had been long wont to allow her the superiority. For certain words of mysterious appropriateness that Mrs. Plymdale let fall about her resolution never to turn her back on her friends, convinced Mrs. Bulstrode that what had happened must be some kind of misfortune, and instead of being able to say with her native directness, "What is it that you have in your mind?" she found herself anxious to get away before she had heard any thing more explicit. She began to have an agitating certainty that the misfortune was something more than the mere loss of money, being keenly sensitive to the fact that Selina now, just as Mrs. Hackbutt had done before, avoided noticing what she said about her husband, as they would have avoided noticing a personal blemish. She said good-by with nervous haste, and told But this imperfectly taught woman, whose the coachman to drive to Mr. Vincy's warehouse. phrases and habits were an odd patchwork, had In that short drive her dread gathered so much a loyal spirit within her. The man whose prosforce from the sense of darkness, that when she perity she had shared through nearly half a life, entered the private counting-house where her and who had unvaryingly cherished her -now brother sat at his desk, her knees trembled, and that punishment had befallen him it was not posher usually florid face was deathly pale. Some-sible to her in any sense to forsake him. There thing of the same effect was produced in him by is a forsaking which still sits at the same board She locked herself in her room. She needed time to get used to her maimed consciousness, her poor lopped life, before she could walk steadily to the place allotted her. A new searching light had fallen on her husband's character, and she could not judge him leniently: the twenty years in which she had believed in him and venerated him by virtue of his concealments came back with particulars that made them seem an odious deceit. He had married her with that bad past life hidden behind him, and she had no faith left to protest his innocence of the worst that was imputed to him. Her honest, ostentatious nature made the sharing of a merited dishonor as bitter as it could be to any mortal. and lies on the same couch with the forsaken soul, | itors were paid. But she was not joyous: her withering it the more by unloving proximity. married life had fulfilled none of her hopes, and She knew, when she locked her door, that she had been quite spoiled for her imagination. In should unlock it ready to go down to her unhap- this brief interval of calm Lydgate, rememberpy husband and espouse his sorrow, and say of ing that he had often been stormy in his hours his guilt, I will mourn and not reproach. But of perturbation, and mindful of the pain Rosashe needed time to gather up her strength; she mond had had to bear, was carefully gentle toward needed to sob out her farewell to all the gladness her; but he, too, had lost some of his old spirit, and pride of her life. When she had resolved to and he still felt it necessary to refer to an economgo down, she prepared herself by some little acts ical change in their way of living as a matter of which might seem mere folly to a hard on-looker; course, trying to reconcile her to it gradually, they were her way of expressing to all spectators and repressing his anger when she answered by visible or invisible that she had begun a new life wishing that he would go to live in London. When in which she embraced humiliation. She took she did not make this answer, she listened lanoff all her ornaments and put on a plain black guidly, and wondered what she had that was gown, and instead of wearing her much-adorned worth living for. The hard and contemptuous cap and large bows of haft, she brushed her hair words which had fallen from her husband in his down and put on a plain bonnet-cap, which made anger had deeply offended that vanity which he her look suddenly like an early Methodist. had at first called into active enjoyment; and Bulstrode, who knew that his wife had been out what she regarded as his perverse way of looking and had come in saying that she was not well, at things kept up a secret repulsion, which made had spent the time in an agitation equal to hers. her receive all his tenderness as a poor substitute He had looked forward to her learning the truth for the happiness he had failed to give her. from others, and had acquiesced in that probabil- They were at a disadvantage with their neighity, as something easier to him than any confes- bors, and there was no longer any outlook tosion. But now that he imagined the moment of ward Quallingham there was no outlook any her knowledge come, he waited the result in an- where except in an occasional letter from Will guish. His daughters had been obliged to con- Ladislaw. She had felt stung and disappointed sent to leave him, and though he had allowed some by Will's resolution to quit Middlemarch, for, in food to be brought to him, he had not touched it. spite of what she knew and guessed about his adHe felt himself perishing slowly in unpitied mis- miration for Dorothea, she secretly cherished the ery. Perhaps he should never see his wife's face belief that he had, or would necessarily come to with affection in it again. And if he turned to have, much more admiration for herself; RosaGod there seemed to be no answer but the press-mond being one of those women who live much ure of retribution. He raised his eyes with a little start and looked at her half amazed for a moment: her pale face, her changed, mourning dress, the trembling about her mouth, all said, "I know;" and her hands and eyes rested gently on him. He burst out crying, and they cried together, she sitting at his side. They could not yet speak to each other of the shame which she was bearing with him, or of the acts which had brought it down on them. His confession was silent, and her promise of faithfulness was silent. Open-minded as she was, she nevertheless shrank from the words which would have expressed their mutual consciousness, as she would have shrunk from flakes of fire. She could not say, "How much is only slander and false suspicion ?" and he did not say, "I am innocent." CHAPTER LXXV. "Le sentiment de la fausseté des plaisirs présents, et l'ignorance de la vanité des plaisirs absents, causent l'inconstance."-PASCAL. ROSAMOND had a gleam of returning cheerfulness when the house was freed from the threatening figure, and when all the disagreeable cred in the idea that each man they meet would have preferred them if the preference had not been hopeless. Mrs. Casaubon was all very well; but Will's interest in her dated before he knew Mrs. Lydgate. Rosamond took his way of talking to herself, which was a mixture of playful fault-finding and hyperbolical gallantry, as the disguise of a deeper feeling; and in his presence she felt that agreeable titillation of vanity and sense of romantic drama which Lydgate's presence had no longer the magic to create. She even fancied -what will not men and women fancy in these matters?-that Will exaggerated his admiration for Mrs. Casaubon in order to pique herself. In this way poor Rosamond's brain had been busy before Will's departure. He would have made, she thought, a much more suitable husband for her than she had found in Lydgate. No notion could have been falser than this, for Rosamond's discontent in her marriage was due to the conditions of marriage itself, to its demand for selfsuppression and tolerance, and not to the nature of her husband; but the easy conception of an unreal Better had a sentimental charm which diverted her ennui. She constructed a little romance which was to vary the flatness of her life; Will Ladislaw was always to be a bachelor and live near her, always to be at her command, and have an understood, though never fully expressed, passion for her, which would be sending out lambent flames every now and then in interesting scenes. His departure had been a proportionate disappointment, and had sadly increased her weariness of Middlemarch; but at first she had the alternative dream of pleasures in store from her intercourse with the family at Quallingham. Since then the troubles of her married life had deepened, and the absence of other re lief encouraged her regretful rumination over that thin romance which she had once fed on. Men and women make sad mistakes about their own symptoms, taking their vague uneasy longings, sometimes for genius, sometimes for religion, and oftener still for a mighty love. Will Ladislaw had written chatty letters, half to her and half to Lydgate, and she had replied: their separation, she felt, was not likely to be final, and the change she now most longed for was that Lydgate should go to live in London; every thing would be agreeable in London; and she had set to work with quiet determination to win this result, when there came a sudden, delightful promise which inspirited her. It came shortly before the memorable meeting at the town-hall, and was nothing less than a letter from Will Ladislaw to Lydgate, which turned, indeed, chiefly on his new interest in plans of colonization, but mentioned, incidentally, that he might find it necessary to pay a visit to Middlemarch within the next few weeks-a very pleasant necessity, he said, almost as good as holidays to a school-boy. He hoped there was his old place on the rug, and a great deal of music in store for him. But he was quite uncertain as to the time. While Lydgate was reading the letter to Rosamond her face looked like a reviving flower-it grew prettier and more blooming. There was nothing unendurable now: the debts were paid, Mr. Ladislaw was coming, and Lydgate would be persuaded to leave Middlemarch and settle in London, which was so different from a provincial town." ness. 66 That was a bright bit of morning. But soon the sky became black over poor Rosamond. The presence of a new gloom in her husband, about which he was entirely reserved toward her-for he dreaded to expose his lacerated feeling to her neutrality and misconception-soon received a painfully strange explanation, alien to all her previous notions of what could affect her happiIn the new gayety of her spirits, thinking that Lydgate had merely a worse fit of moodiness than usual, causing him to leave her remarks unanswered, and evidently to keep out of her way as much as possible, she chose, a few days after the meeting, and without speaking to him on the subject, to send out notes of invitation for a small evening party, feeling convinced that this was a judicious step, since people seemed to have been keeping aloof from them, and wanted restoring to the old habit of intercourse. When the invitations had been accepted, she would tell Lydgate, and give him a wise admonition as to how a medical man should behave to his neighbors; for Rosamond had the gravest little airs possible about other people's duties. But all the invitations were declined, and the last answer came into Lydgate's hands, 66 This is Chichely's scratch. What is he writing to you about ?" said Lydgate, wonderingly, as he handed the note to her. She was obliged to let him see it, and, looking at her severely, he said, "Why on earth have you been sending out invitations without telling me, Rosamond? I beg, I insist that you will not invite any one to this house. I suppose you have been inviting others, and they have refused too.' She said nothing. 99 "Do you hear me?" thundered Lydgate. "Yes, certainly I hear you," said Rosamond, turning her head aside with the movement of a graceful long-necked bird. Lydgate tossed his head without any grace and walked out of the room, feeling himself dangerous. Rosamond's thought was, that he was getting more and more unbearable - not that there was any new special reason for this peremptoriness. His indisposition to tell her any thing in which he was sure beforehand that she would not be interested was growing into an unreflecting habit, and she was in ignorance of every thing connected with the thousand pounds except that the loan had come from her uncle Bulstrode. Lydgate's odious humors and their neighbors' apparent avoidance of them had an unaccountable date for her in their relief from money difficulties. If the invitations had been accepted she would have gone to invite her mamma and the rest, whom she had seen nothing of for several days; and she now put on her bonnet to go and inquire what had become of them all, suddenly feeling as if there were a conspiracy to leave her in isolation with a husband disposed to offend every body. It was after the dinner hour, and she found her father and mother seated together alone in the drawing-room. They greeted her with sad looks, saying, "Well, my dear!" and no more. She had never seen her father look so downcast; and seating herself near him, she said, "Is there any thing the matter, papa?" He did not answer, but Mrs. Vincy said, "Oh, my dear, have you heard nothing? It won't be long before it reaches you." "Is it any thing about Tertius ?" said Rosamond, turning pale. The idea of trouble immediately connected itself with what had been unaccountable to her in him. "Oh, my dear, yes. To think of your marrying into this trouble. Debt was bad enough, but this will be worse.' Stay, stay, Lucy," said Mr. Vincy. "Have you heard nothing about your uncle Bulstrode, Rosamond ?" 66 "No, papa," said the poor thing, feeling as if trouble were not any thing she had before experienced, but some invisible power with an iron grasp that made her soul faint within her. Her father told her every thing, saying at the end, "It's better for you to know, my dear. I think Lydgate must leave the town. Things have gone against him. I dare say he couldn't help it. I don't accuse him of any harm," said Mr. Vincy. He had always before been disposed to find the utmost fault with Lydgate. The shock to Rosamond was terrible. It seemed to her that no lot could be so cruelly hard as hers-to have married a man who had become the centre of infamous suspicions. In many cases it is inevitable that the same is felt to be the worst part of crime; and it would have required a great deal of disentangling reflection, such as had never entered into Rosamond's life, for her in these moments to feel that her trouble was less than if her husband had been certainly known to have done something criminal. the shame seemed to be there. And she had innocently married this man with the belief that he and his family were a glory to her! She showed her usual reticence to her parents, and only said that if Lydgate had done as she wished, he would have left Middlemarch long ago. All "She bears it beyond any thing," said her mother, when she was gone. 66 Ah, thank God!" said Mr. Vincy, who was much broken down.. But Rosamond went home with a sense of justified repugnance toward her husband. What had he really done-how had he really acted? She did not know. Why had he not told her every thing? He did not speak to her on the subject, and of course she could not speak to him. It came into her mind once that she would ask her father to let her go home again; but dwelling on that prospect made it seem utter dreariness to her; a married woman gone back to live with her parents-life seemed to have nò meaning for her in such a position: she could not contemplate herself in it. The next two days Lydgate observed a change in her, and believed that she had heard the bad news. Would she speak to him about it, or would she go on forever in the silence which seemed to imply that she believed him guilty? We must remember that he was in a morbid state of mind, in which almost all contact was pain. Certainly, Rosamond in this case had equal reason to complain of reserve and want of confidence on his part; but in the bitterness of his soul he excused himself was he not justified in shrinking from the task of telling her, since, now she knew the truth, she had no impulse to speak to him? But a deeper-lying consciousness that he was in fault made him restless, and the silence between them became intolerable to him; it was as if they were both adrift on one piece of wreck and looked away from each other. He thought, "I am a fool. Haven't I given up expecting any thing? I have married care, not help." And that evening he said, "Rosamond, have you heard any thing that distresses you?" "Yes," she answered, laying down her work, which she had been carrying on with a languid semi-consciousness, most unlike her usual self. "What have you heard?" 66 Every thing, I suppose. Papa told me." "That people think me disgraced ?" "Yes," said Rosamond, faintly, beginning to sew again automatically. There was silence. Lydgate thought, "If she has any trust in me-any notion of what I am, she ought to speak now, and say that she does not believe I have deserved disgrace." But Rosamond on her side went on moving her fingers languidly. Whatever was to be said on the subject she expected to come from Tertius. What did she know? And if he were innocent of any wrong, why did he not do something to clear himself? consciousness all the while that he should have to master this anger, and tell her every thing, and convince her of the facts. For he had almost learned the lesson that he must bend himself to her nature, and that because she came short in her sympathy, he must give the more. Soon he recurred to his intention of opening himself: the occasion must not be lost. If he could bring her to feel with some solemnity that here was a slander which must be met and not run away from, and that the whole trouble had come out of his desperate want of money, it would be a moment for urging powerfully on her that they should be one in the resolve to do with as little money as possible, so that they might weather the bad time and keep themselves independent. He would mention the definite measures which he desired to take, and win her to a willing spirit. He was bound to try this-and what else was there for him to do? He did not know how long he had been walking uneasily backward and forward, but Rosamond felt that it was long, and wished that he would sit down. She too had begun to think this an opportunity for urging on Tertius what he ought to do. Whatever might be the truth about all this misery, there was one dread which asserted itself. Lydgate at last seated himself, not in his usual chair, but in one nearer to Rosamond, leaning aside in it toward her, and looking at her gravely before he reopened the sad subject. He had conquered himself so far, and was about to speak with a sense of solemnity, as on an occasion which was not to be repeated. He had even opened his lips, when Rosamond, letting her hands fall, looked at him, and said, Surely, Tertius—” 66 "Well ?" "Surely, now at last you have given up the idea of staying in Middlemarch. I can not go on living here. Let us go to London. Papa, and every one else, says you had better go. Whatever misery I have to put up with, it will be easier away from here." Lydgate felt miserably jarred. Instead of that critical outpouring for which he had prepared himself with effort, here was the old round to be gone through again. He could not bear it. With a quick change of countenance he rose and went out of the room. We Perhaps if he had been strong enough to persist in his determination to be the more because she was less, that evening might have had a better issue. If his energy could have borne down that check, he might still have wrought on Rosamond's vision and will. can not be sure that any natures, however inflexThis silence of hers brought a new rush of gallible or peculiar, will resist this effect from a more to that bitter mood in which Lydgate had been saying to himself that nobody believed in himeven Farebrother had not come forward. He had begun to question her with the intent that their conversation should disperse the chill fog which had gathered between them, but he felt his resolution checked by despairing resentment. The beginning of mutual understanding and Even this trouble, like the rest, she seemed to re-resolve seemed as far off as ever; nay, it seemed gard as if it were hers alone. He was always to her a being apart, doing what she objected to. He started from his chair with an angry impulse, and, thrusting his hands in his pockets, walked up and down the room. There was an underlying massive being than their own. They may be taken by storm and for the moment converted, becoming part of the soul which enwraps them in the ardor of its movement. But poor Lydgate had a throbbing pain within him, and his energy had fallen short of its task. blocked out by the sense of unsuccessful effort, They lived on from day to day, with their thoughts still apart, Lydgate going about what work he had in a mood of despair, and Rosamond feeling, with some justification, that he |