However, Lydgate was installed as medical attendant on the Vincys, and the event was a subject of general conversation in Middlemarch.  Some said, that the Vincys had behaved scandalously, that Mr. Vincy had threatened Wrench, and that Mrs. Vincy had accused him of poisoning her son.  Others were of opinion that Mr. Lydgate’s passing by was providential, that he was wonderfully clever in fevers, and that Bulstrode was in the right to bring him forward.  Many people believed that Lydgate’s coming to the town at all was really due to Bulstrode; and Mrs. Taft, who was always counting stitches and gathered her information in misleading fragments caught between the rows of her knitting, had got it into her head that Mr. Lydgate was a natural son of Bulstrode’s, a fact which seemed to justify her suspicions of evangelical laymen.

She one day communicated this piece of knowledge to Mrs. Farebrother, who did not fail to tell her son of it, observing—­

“I should not be surprised at anything in Bulstrode, but I should be sorry to think it of Mr. Lydgate.”

“Why, mother,” said Mr. Farebrother, after an explosive laugh, “you know very well that Lydgate is of a good family in the North.  He never heard of Bulstrode before he came here.”

“That is satisfactory so far as Mr. Lydgate is concerned, Camden,” said the old lady, with an air of precision.—­“But as to Bulstrode—­ the report may be true of some other son.”

CHAPTER XXVII.

    Let the high Muse chant loves Olympian: 
    We are but mortals, and must sing of man.

An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly furniture by lifting it into the serene light of science, has shown me this pregnant little fact.  Your pier-glass or extensive surface of polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round that little sun.  It is demonstrable that the scratches are going everywhere impartially and it is only your candle which produces the flattering illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling with an exclusive optical selection.  These things are a parable.  The scratches are events, and the candle is the egoism of any person now absent—­ of Miss Vincy, for example.  Rosamond had a Providence of her own who had kindly made her more charming than other girls, and who seemed to have arranged Fred’s illness and Mr. Wrench’s mistake in order to bring her and Lydgate within effective proximity.  It would have been to contravene these arrangements if Rosamond had consented to go away to Stone Court or elsewhere, as her parents wished her to do, especially since Mr. Lydgate thought the precaution needless.  Therefore, while Miss Morgan and the children were sent away to a farmhouse the morning after Fred’s illness had declared itself, Rosamond refused to leave papa and mamma.