“I only wish I had known before—­I wish he knew—­then we could be quite happy in thinking of each other, though we are forever parted.  And if I could but have given him the money, and made things easier for him!”—­were the longings that came back the most persistently.  And yet, so heavily did the world weigh on her in spite of her independent energy, that with this idea of Will as in need of such help and at a disadvantage with the world, there came always the vision of that unfittingness of any closer relation between them which lay in the opinion of every one connected with her.  She felt to the full all the imperativeness of the motives which urged Will’s conduct.  How could he dream of her defying the barrier that her husband had placed between them?—­how could she ever say to herself that she would defy it?

Will’s certainty as the carriage grew smaller in the distance, had much more bitterness in it.  Very slight matters were enough to gall him in his sensitive mood, and the sight of Dorothea driving past him while he felt himself plodding along as a poor devil seeking a position in a world which in his present temper offered him little that he coveted, made his conduct seem a mere matter of necessity, and took away the sustainment of resolve.  After all, he had no assurance that she loved him:  could any man pretend that he was simply glad in such a case to have the suffering all on his own side?

That evening Will spent with the Lydgates; the next evening he was gone.

BOOK VII.

TWO TEMPTATIONS.

CHAPTER LXIII.

    These little things are great to little man.—­GOLDSMITH.

“Have you seen much of your scientific phoenix, Lydgate, lately?” said Mr. Toller at one of his Christmas dinner-parties, speaking to Mr. Farebrother on his right hand.

“Not much, I am sorry to say,” answered the Vicar, accustomed to parry Mr. Toller’s banter about his belief in the new medical light.  “I am out of the way and he is too busy.”

“Is he?  I am glad to hear it,” said Dr. Minchin, with mingled suavity and surprise.

“He gives a great deal of time to the New Hospital,” said Mr. Farebrother, who had his reasons for continuing the subject:  “I hear of that from my neighbor, Mrs. Casaubon, who goes there often.  She says Lydgate is indefatigable, and is making a fine thing of Bulstrode’s institution.  He is preparing a new ward in case of the cholera coming to us.”

“And preparing theories of treatment to try on the patients, I suppose,” said Mr. Toller.

“Come, Toller, be candid,” said Mr. Farebrother.  “You are too clever not to see the good of a bold fresh mind in medicine, as well as in everything else; and as to cholera, I fancy, none of you are very sure what you ought to do.  If a man goes a little too far along a new road, it is usually himself that he harms more than any one else.”