ifest too much satisfaction in
her lot--the poor thing should have some hint given her that if she
knew the truth she would have less complacency in her bonnet, and in
light dishes for a supper-party. Stronger than all, there was the
regard for a friend's moral improvement, sometimes called her soul,
which was likely to be benefited by remarks tending to gloom, uttered
with the accompaniment of pensive staring at the furniture and a manner
implying that the speaker would not tell what was on her mind, from
regard to the feelings of her hearer. On the whole, one might say that
an ardent charity was at work setting the virtuous mind to make a
neighbor unhappy for her good.

There were hardly any wives in Middlemarch whose matrimonial
misfortunes would in different ways be likely to call forth more of
this moral activity than Rosamond and her aunt Bulstrode. Mrs.
Bulstrode was not an object of dislike, and had never consciously
injured any human being. Men had always thought her a handsome
comfortable woman, and had reckoned it among the signs of Bulstrode's
hypocrisy that he had chosen a red-blooded Vincy, instead of a ghastly
and melancholy person suited to his low esteem for earthly pleasure.
When the scandal about her husband was disclosed they remarked of
her--"Ah, poor woman! She's as honest as the day--_she_ never
suspected anything wrong in him, you may depend on it." Women, who
were intimate with her, talked together much of "poor Harriet,"
imagined what her feelings must be when she came to know everything,
and conjectured how much she had already come to know. There was no
spiteful disposition towards her; rather, there was a busy benevolence
anxious to ascertain what it would be well for her to feel and do under
the circumstances, which of course kept the imagination occupied with
her character and history from the times when she was Harriet Vincy
till now. With the review of Mrs. Bulstrode and her position it was
inevitable to associate Rosamond, whose prospects were under the same
blight with her aunt's. Rosamond was more severely criticised and less
pitied, though she too, as one of the good old Vincy family who had
always been known in Middlemarch, was regarded as a victim to marriage
with an interloper. The Vincys had their weaknesses, but then they lay
on the surface: there was never anything bad to be "found out"
concerning them. Mrs. Bulstrode was vindicated from any resemblance to
her husband