Lydgate felt uncomfortable under these kindly suppositions.  They made more distinct within him the uneasy consciousness which had shown its first dim stirrings only a few hours before, that Bulstrode’s motives for his sudden beneficence following close upon the chillest indifference might be merely selfish.  He let the kindly suppositions pass.  He could not tell the history of the loan, but it was more vividly present with him than ever, as well as the fact which the Vicar delicately ignored—­that this relation of personal indebtedness to Bulstrode was what he had once been most resolved to avoid.

He began, instead of answering, to speak of his projected economies, and of his having come to look at his life from a different point of view.

“I shall set up a surgery,” he said.  “I really think I made a mistaken effort in that respect.  And if Rosamond will not mind, I shall take an apprentice.  I don’t like these things, but if one carries them out faithfully they are not really lowering.  I have had a severe galling to begin with:  that will make the small rubs seem easy.”

Poor Lydgate! the “if Rosamond will not mind,” which had fallen from him involuntarily as part of his thought, was a significant mark of the yoke he bore.  But Mr. Farebrother, whose hopes entered strongly into the same current with Lydgate’s, and who knew nothing about him that could now raise a melancholy presentiment, left him with affectionate congratulation.

CHAPTER LXXI.

Clown. . . .  ’Twas in the Bunch of Grapes, where, indeed,
you have a delight to sit, have you not? 
Froth.  I have so:  because it is an open room, and good for winter. 
Clo.  Why, very well then:  I hope here be truths. 
—­Measure for Measure.

Five days after the death of Raffles, Mr. Bambridge was standing at his leisure under the large archway leading into the yard of the Green Dragon.  He was not fond of solitary contemplation, but he had only just come out of the house, and any human figure standing at ease under the archway in the early afternoon was as certain to attract companionship as a pigeon which has found something worth peeking at.  In this case there was no material object to feed upon, but the eye of reason saw a probability of mental sustenance in the shape of gossip.  Mr. Hopkins, the meek-mannered draper opposite, was the first to act on this inward vision, being the more ambitious of a little masculine talk because his customers were chiefly women.  Mr. Bambridge was rather curt to the draper, feeling that Hopkins was of course glad to talk to him, but that he was not going to waste much of his talk on Hopkins.  Soon, however, there was a small cluster of more important listeners, who were either deposited from the passers-by, or had sauntered to the spot expressly to see if there were anything going on at the Green Dragon; and Mr. Bambridge was finding