to go among foreigners."

"The doctor says that is what he should recommend the Lydgates to do,"
said Mrs. Sprague. "He says Lydgate ought to have kept among the
French."

"That would suit _her_ well enough, I dare say," said Mrs. Plymdale;
"there is that kind of lightness about her. But she got that from her
mother; she never got it from her aunt Bulstrode, who always gave her
good advice, and to my knowledge would rather have had her marry
elsewhere."

Mrs. Plymdale was in a situation which caused her some complication of
feeling. There had been not only her intimacy with Mrs. Bulstrode, but
also a profitable business relation of the great Plymdale dyeing house
with Mr. Bulstrode, which on the one hand would have inclined her to
desire that the mildest view of his character should be the true one,
but on the other, made her the more afraid of seeming to palliate his
culpability. Again, the late alliance of her family with the Tollers
had brought her in connection with the best circle, which gratified her
in every direction except in the inclination to those serious views
which she believed to be the best in another sense. The sharp little
woman's conscience was somewhat troubled in the adjustment of these
opposing "bests," and of her griefs and satisfactions under late
events, which were likely to humble those who needed humbling, but also
to fall heavily on her old friend whose faults she would have preferred
seeing on a background of prosperity.

Poor Mrs. Bulstrode, meanwhile, had been no further shaken by the
oncoming tread of calamity than in the busier stirring of that secret
uneasiness which had always been present in her since the last visit of
Raffles to The Shrubs. That the hateful man had come ill to Stone
Court, and that her husband had chosen to remain there and watch over
him, she allowed to be explained by the fact that Raffles had been
employed and aided in earlier-days, and that this made a tie of
benevolence towards him in his degraded helplessness; and she had been
since then innocently cheered by her husband's more hopeful speech
about his own health and ability to continue his attention to business.
The calm was disturbed when Lydgate had brought him home ill from the
meeting, and in spite of comforting assurances during the next few
days, she cried in private from the conviction that her husband was not
suffering from bodily illness merely, but from something that afflicted
his mind.