It was Lydgate’s misfortune and Rosamond’s
too, that his tenderness towards her, which was both
an emotional prompting and a well-considered resolve,
was inevitably interrupted by these outbursts of indignation
either ironical or remonstrant. She thought them
totally unwarranted, and the repulsion which this
exceptional severity excited in her was in danger
of making the more persistent tenderness unacceptable.
“I see you do not wish me to go,” she
said, with chill mildness; “why can you not
say so, without that kind of violence? I shall
stay until you request me to do otherwise.”
Lydgate said no more, but went out on his rounds.
He felt bruised and shattered, and there was a dark
line under his eyes which Rosamond had not seen before.
She could not bear to look at him. Tertius had
a way of taking things which made them a great deal
worse for her.
Our deeds still travel with
us from afar,
And what we have been makes
us what we are.”
Bulstrode’s first object after Lydgate had left
Stone Court was to examine Raffles’s pockets,
which he imagined were sure to carry signs in the
shape of hotel-bills of the places he had stopped in,
if he had not told the truth in saying that he had
come straight from Liverpool because he was ill and
had no money. There were various bills crammed
into his pocketbook, but none of a later date than
Christmas at any other place, except one, which bore
date that morning. This was crumpled up with
a hand-bill about a horse-fair in one of his tail-pockets,
and represented the cost of three days’ stay
at an inn at Bilkley, where the fair was held—
a town at least forty miles from Middlemarch.
The bill was heavy, and since Raffles had no luggage
with him, it seemed probable that he had left his
portmanteau behind in payment, in order to save money
for his travelling fare; for his purse was empty, and
he had only a couple of sixpences and some loose pence
in his pockets.
Bulstrode gathered a sense of safety from these indications
that Raffles had really kept at a distance from Middlemarch
since his memorable visit at Christmas. At a
distance and among people who were strangers to Bulstrode,
what satisfaction could there be to Raffles’s
tormenting, self-magnifying vein in telling old scandalous
stories about a Middlemarch banker? And what
harm if he did talk? The chief point now was
to keep watch over him as long as there was any danger
of that intelligible raving, that unaccountable impulse
to tell, which seemed to have acted towards Caleb Garth;
and Bulstrode felt much anxiety lest some such impulse
should come over him at the sight of Lydgate.
He sat up alone with him through the night, only
ordering the housekeeper to lie down in her clothes,
so as to be ready when he called her, alleging his
own indisposition to sleep, and his anxiety to carry
out the doctor’s orders. He did carry them
