"Then I have fulfilled my commission thoroughly," said Mr. Farebrother,
putting out his hand to Mary, "and I shall ride back to Middlemarch
forthwith. With this prospect before him, we shall get Fred into the
right niche somehow, and I hope I shall live to join your hands. God
bless you!"

"Oh, please stay, and let me give you some tea," said Mary. Her eyes
filled with tears, for something indefinable, something like the
resolute suppression of a pain in Mr. Farebrother's manner, made her
feel suddenly miserable, as she had once felt when she saw her father's
hands trembling in a moment of trouble.

"No, my dear, no. I must get back."

In three minutes the Vicar was on horseback again, having gone
magnanimously through a duty much harder than the renunciation of
whist, or even than the writing of penitential meditations.

CHAPTER LIII.

It is but a shallow haste which concludeth insincerity from
what outsiders call inconsistency--putting a dead mechanism
of "ifs" and "therefores" for the living myriad of hidden
suckers whereby the belief and the conduct are wrought into
mutual sustainment.

Mr. Bulstrode, when he was hoping to acquire a new interest in Lowick,
had naturally had an especial wish that the new clergyman should be one
whom he thoroughly approved; and he believed it to be a chastisement
and admonition directed to his own shortcomings and those of the nation
at large, that just about the time when he came in possession of the
deeds which made him the proprietor of Stone Court, Mr. Farebrother
"read himself" into the quaint little church and preached his first
sermon to the congregation of farmers, laborers, and village artisans.
It was not that Mr. Bulstrode intended to frequent Lowick Church or to
reside at Stone Court for a good while to come: he had bought the
excellent farm and fine homestead simply as a retreat which he might
gradually enlarge as to the land and beautify as to the dwelling, until
it should be conducive to the divine glory that he should enter on it
as a residence, partially withdrawing from his present exertions in the
administration of business, and throwing more conspicuously on the side
of Gospel truth the weight of local landed proprietorship, which
Providence might increase by unforeseen occasions of purchase. A
strong leading in this direction seemed to have been given in the
surprising facility of getting Stone Court, when every one had expec