“Did he mention the precise order of occupation to which he would addict himself?”

“No.  But he said that he felt the danger which lay for him in your generosity.  Of course he will write to you about it.  Do you not think better of him for his resolve?”

“I shall await his communication on the subject,” said Mr. Casaubon.

“I told him I was sure that the thing you considered in all you did for him was his own welfare.  I remembered your goodness in what you said about him when I first saw him at Lowick,” said Dorothea, putting her hand on her husband’s.

“I had a duty towards him,” said Mr. Casaubon, laying his other hand on Dorothea’s in conscientious acceptance of her caress, but with a glance which he could not hinder from being uneasy.  “The young man, I confess, is not otherwise an object of interest to me, nor need we, I think, discuss his future course, which it is not ours to determine beyond the limits which I have sufficiently indicated.”  Dorothea did not mention Will again.

BOOK III.

WAITING FOR DEATH.

CHAPTER XXIII.

    “Your horses of the Sun,” he said,
    “And first-rate whip Apollo! 
     Whate’er they be, I’ll eat my head,
     But I will beat them hollow.”

Fred Vincy, we have seen, had a debt on his mind, and though no such immaterial burthen could depress that buoyant-hearted young gentleman for many hours together, there were circumstances connected with this debt which made the thought of it unusually importunate.  The creditor was Mr. Bambridge a horse-dealer of the neighborhood, whose company was much sought in Middlemarch by young men understood to be “addicted to pleasure.”  During the vacations Fred had naturally required more amusements than he had ready money for, and Mr. Bambridge had been accommodating enough not only to trust him for the hire of horses and the accidental expense of ruining a fine hunter, but also to make a small advance by which he might be able to meet some losses at billiards.  The total debt was a hundred and sixty pounds.  Bambridge was in no alarm about his money, being sure that young Vincy had backers; but he had required something to show for it, and Fred had at first given a bill with his own signature.  Three months later he had renewed this bill with the signature of Caleb Garth.  On both occasions Fred had felt confident that he should meet the bill himself, having ample funds at disposal in his own hopefulness.  You will hardly demand that his confidence should have a basis in external facts; such confidence, we know, is something less coarse and materialistic:  it is a comfortable disposition leading us to expect that the wisdom of providence or the folly of our friends, the mysteries of luck or the still greater mystery of our high individual value in the universe, will bring about agreeable