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 de