he suffered a violent reaction,
and wept like a woman. It was the first time he had encountered an
open expression of scorn from any man higher than Raffles; and with
that scorn hurrying like venom through his system, there was no
sensibility left to consolations. Rut the relief of weeping had to be
checked. His wife and daughters soon came home from hearing the
address of an Oriental missionary, and were full of regret that papa
had not heard, in the first instance, the interesting things which they
tried to repeat to him.

Perhaps, through all other hidden thoughts, the one that breathed most
comfort was, that Will Ladislaw at least was not likely to publish what
had taken place that evening.

CHAPTER LXII.

"He was a squyer of lowe degre,
That loved the king's daughter of Hungrie.
--Old Romance.

Will Ladislaw's mind was now wholly bent on seeing Dorothea again, and
forthwith quitting Middlemarch. The morning after his agitating scene
with Bulstrode he wrote a brief letter to her, saying that various
causes had detained him in the neighborhood longer than he had
expected, and asking her permission to call again at Lowick at some
hour which she would mention on the earliest possible day, he being
anxious to depart, but unwilling to do so until she had granted him an
interview. He left the letter at the office, ordering the messenger to
carry it to Lowick Manor, and wait for an answer.

Ladislaw felt the awkwardness of asking for more last words. His
former farewell had been made in the hearing of Sir James Chettam, and
had been announced as final even to the butler. It is certainly trying
to a man's dignity to reappear when he is not expected to do so: a
first farewell has pathos in it, but to come back for a second lends an
opening to comedy, and it was possible even that there might be bitter
sneers afloat about Will's motives for lingering. Still it was on the
whole more satisfactory to his feeling to take the directest means of
seeing Dorothea, than to use any device which might give an air of
chance to a meeting of which he wished her to understand that it was
what he earnestly sought. When he had parted from her before, he had
been in ignorance of facts which gave a new aspect to the relation
between them, and made a more absolute severance than he had then
believed in. He knew nothing of Dorothea's private fortune, and being
little used to refl