the removal of a load. “I like that better than all the news in the ‘Times.’ I confess I came to you with a heavy heart.”
“Thank you for coming,” said Lydgate, cordially. “I can enjoy the kindness all the more because I am happier. I have certainly been a good deal crushed. I'm afraid I shall find the bruises still painful by-and-by,” he added, smiling rather sadly; “but just now I can only feel that the torture-screw is off.”
Mr Farebrother was silent for a moment, and then said earnestly, “My dear fellow, let me ask you one question. Forgive me if I take a liberty.”
“I don’t believe you will ask anything that ought to offend me.”
“Then—this is necessary to set my heart quite at rest—you have not—have you?—in order to pay your debts, incurred another debt which may harass you worse hereafter?”
“No,” said Lydgate, colouring slightly. “There is no reason why I should not tell you—since the fact is so—that the person to whom I am indebted is Bulstrode. He has made me a very handsome advance—a thousand pounds—and he can afford to wait for repayment.”
“Well, that is generous,” said Mr Farebrother, compelling himself to approve of the man whom he disliked. His delicate feeling shrank from dwelling even in his thought on the fact that he had always urged Lydgate to avoid any personal entanglement with Bulstrode. He added immediately, “And Bulstrode must naturally feel an interest in your welfare, after you have worked with him in a way which has probably reduced your income instead of adding to it. I am glad to think that he has acted accordingly.”
Lydgate felt uncomfortable under these kindly suppositions. They made more distinct within him the uneasy consciousness which had shown its first dim stirrings only a few hours before, that Bulstrode’s motives for his sudden beneficence following close upon the chillest indifference might be merely selfish. He let the kindly suppositions pass. He could not tell the history of the loan, but it was more vividly present with him than ever, as well as the fact which the Vicar delicately ignored—that this relation of personal indebtedness to Bulstrode was what he had once been most resolved to avoid.
He began, instead of answering, to speak of his projected economies, and of his having come to look at his life from a different point of view.
“I shall set up a surgery,” he said. “I really think I made a mistaken effort in that respect. And if Rosamond will not mind, I shall take an apprentice. I don’t like these things, but if one carries them out faithfully they are not really lowering. I have had a severe galling to begin with: that will make the small rubs seem easy.”
Poor Lydgate! the “if Rosamond will not mind,” which had fallen from him involuntarily as part of his thought, was a significant mark of the yoke he bore. But Mr Farebrother, whose hopes entered
