This proviso might have sounded rather satirically in Will’s ear if he had been in a mood to care about such satire.  It referred to an understanding entered into many weeks before with the proprietors of the paper, that he should be at liberty any day he pleased to hand over the management to the subeditor whom he had been training; since he wished finally to quit Middlemarch.  But indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable; and we all know the difficulty of carrying out a resolve when we secretly long that it may turn out to be unnecessary.  In such states of mind the most incredulous person has a private leaning towards miracle:  impossible to conceive how our wish could be fulfilled, still—­ very wonderful things have happened!  Will did not confess this weakness to himself, but he lingered.  What was the use of going to London at that time of the year?  The Rugby men who would remember him were not there; and so far as political writing was concerned, he would rather for a few weeks go on with the “Pioneer.”  At the present moment, however, when Mr. Bulstrode was speaking to him, he had both a strengthened resolve to go and an equally strong resolve not to go till he had once more seen Dorothea.  Hence he replied that he had reasons for deferring his departure a little, and would be happy to go to the sale.

Will was in a defiant mood, his consciousness being deeply stung with the thought that the people who looked at him probably knew a fact tantamount to an accusation against him as a fellow with low designs which were to be frustrated by a disposal of property.  Like most people who assert their freedom with regard to conventional distinction, he was prepared to be sudden and quick at quarrel with any one who might hint that he had personal reasons for that assertion—­ that there was anything in his blood, his bearing, or his character to which he gave the mask of an opinion.  When he was under an irritating impression of this kind he would go about for days with a defiant look, the color changing in his transparent skin as if he were on the qui vive, watching for something which he had to dart upon.

This expression was peculiarly noticeable in him at the sale, and those who had only seen him in his moods of gentle oddity or of bright enjoyment would have been struck with a contrast.  He was not sorry to have this occasion for appearing in public before the Middlemarch tribes of Toller, Hackbutt, and the rest, who looked down on him as an adventurer, and were in a state of brutal ignorance about Dante—­who sneered at his Polish blood, and were themselves of a breed very much in need of crossing.  He stood in a conspicuous place not far from the auctioneer, with a fore-finger in each side-pocket and his head thrown backward, not caring to speak to anybody, though he had been cordially welcomed as a connoiss_ure_ by Mr. Trumbull, who was enjoying the utmost activity of his great faculties.