But against his taking this step, which he still felt to be a contemptible relinquishment of present work, a guilty turning aside from what was a real and might be a widening channel for worthy activity, to start again without any justified destination, there was this obstacle, that the purchaser, if procurable at all, might not be quickly forthcoming.  And afterwards?  Rosamond in a poor lodging, though in the largest city or most distant town, would not find the life that could save her from gloom, and save him from the reproach of having plunged her into it.  For when a man is at the foot of the hill in his fortunes, he may stay a long while there in spite of professional accomplishment.  In the British climate there is no incompatibility between scientific insight and furnished lodgings:  the incompatibility is chiefly between scientific ambition and a wife who objects to that kind of residence.

But in the midst of his hesitation, opportunity came to decide him.  A note from Mr. Bulstrode requested Lydgate to call on him at the Bank.  A hypochondriacal tendency had shown itself in the banker’s constitution of late; and a lack of sleep, which was really only a slight exaggeration of an habitual dyspeptic symptom, had been dwelt on by him as a sign of threatening insanity.  He wanted to consult Lydgate without delay on that particular morning, although he had nothing to tell beyond what he had told before.  He listened eagerly to what Lydgate had to say in dissipation of his fears, though this too was only repetition; and this moment in which Bulstrode was receiving a medical opinion with a sense of comfort, seemed to make the communication of a personal need to him easier than it had been in Lydgate’s contemplation beforehand.  He had been insisting that it would be well for Mr. Bulstrode to relax his attention to business.

“One sees how any mental strain, however slight, may affect a delicate frame,” said Lydgate at that stage of the consultation when the remarks tend to pass from the personal to the general, “by the deep stamp which anxiety will make for a time even on the young and vigorous.  I am naturally very strong; yet I have been thoroughly shaken lately by an accumulation of trouble.”

“I presume that a constitution in the susceptible state in which mine at present is, would be especially liable to fall a victim to cholera, if it visited our district.  And since its appearance near London, we may well besiege the Mercy-seat for our protection,” said Mr. Bulstrode, not intending to evade Lydgate’s allusion, but really preoccupied with alarms about himself.

“You have at all events taken your share in using good practical precautions for the town, and that is the best mode of asking for protection,” said Lydgate, with a strong distaste for the broken metaphor and bad logic of the banker’s religion, somewhat increased by the apparent deafness of his sympathy.  But his mind had taken up its long-prepared movement towards getting help, and was not yet arrested.  He added, “The town has done well in the way of cleansing, and finding appliances; and I think that if the cholera should come, even our enemies will admit that the arrangements in the Hospital are a public good.”