“How?” said Lydgate, coldly.

“Ah, you didn’t mean me to know it; I call that ungenerous reticence.  You should let a man have the pleasure of feeling that you have done him a good turn.  I don’t enter into some people’s dislike of being under an obligation:  upon my word, I prefer being under an obligation to everybody for behaving well to me.”

“I can’t tell what you mean,” said Lydgate, “unless it is that I once spoke of you to Mrs. Casaubon.  But I did not think that she would break her promise not to mention that I had done so,” said Lydgate, leaning his back against the corner of the mantel-piece, and showing no radiance in his face.

“It was Brooke who let it out, only the other day.  He paid me the compliment of saying that he was very glad I had the living though you had come across his tactics, and had praised me up as a lien and a Tillotson, and that sort of thing, till Mrs. Casaubon would hear of no one else.”

“Oh, Brooke is such a leaky-minded fool,” said Lydgate, contemptuously.

“Well, I was glad of the leakiness then.  I don’t see why you shouldn’t like me to know that you wished to do me a service, my dear fellow.  And you certainly have done me one.  It’s rather a strong check to one’s self-complacency to find how much of one’s right doing depends on not being in want of money.  A man will not be tempted to say the Lord’s Prayer backward to please the devil, if he doesn’t want the devil’s services.  I have no need to hang on the smiles of chance now.”

“I don’t see that there’s any money-getting without chance,” said Lydgate; “if a man gets it in a profession, it’s pretty sure to come by chance.”

Mr. Farebrother thought he could account for this speech, in striking contrast with Lydgate’s former way of talking, as the perversity which will often spring from the moodiness of a man ill at ease in his affairs.  He answered in a tone of good-humored admission—­

“Ah, there’s enormous patience wanted with the way of the world.  But it is the easier for a man to wait patiently when he has friends who love him, and ask for nothing better than to help him through, so far as it lies in their power.”

“Oh yes,” said Lydgate, in a careless tone, changing his attitude and looking at his watch.  “People make much more of their difficulties than they need to do.”

He knew as distinctly as possible that this was an offer of help to himself from Mr. Farebrother, and he could not bear it.  So strangely determined are we mortals, that, after having been long gratified with the sense that he had privately done the Vicar a service, the suggestion that the Vicar discerned his need of a service in return made him shrink into unconquerable reticence.  Besides, behind all making of such offers what else must come?—­that he should “mention his case,” imply that he wanted specific things.  At that moment, suicide seemed easier.