 mortals than Fred Vincy hold half their rectitude in the mind of the
being they love best. »The theatre of all my actions is fallen,« said an antique
personage when his chief friend was dead; and they are fortunate who get a
theatre where the audience demands their best. Certainly it would have made a
considerable difference to Fred at that time if Mary Garth had had no decided
notions as to what was admirable in character.
    Mr. Garth was not at the office, and Fred rode on to his house, which was a
little way outside the town - a homely place with an orchard in front of it, a
rambling, old-fashioned, half-timbered building, which before the town had
spread had been a farmhouse, but was now surrounded with the private gardens of
the townsmen. We get the fonder of our houses if they have a physiognomy of
their own, as our friends have. The Garth family, which was rather a large one,
for Mary had four brothers and one sister, were very fond of their old house,
from which all the best furniture had long been sold. Fred liked it too, knowing
it by heart even to the attic which smelt deliciously of apples and quinces, and
until to-day he had never come to it without pleasant expectations; but his
heart beat uneasily now with the sense that he should probably have to make his
confession before Mrs. Garth, of whom he was rather more in awe than of her
husband. Not that she was inclined to sarcasm and to impulsive sallies, as Mary
was. In her present matronly age at least, Mrs. Garth never committed herself by
over-hasty speech; having, as she said, borne the yoke in her youth, and learned
self-control. She had that rare sense which discerns what is unalterable, and
submits to it without murmuring. Adoring her husband's virtues, she had very
early made up her mind to his incapacity of minding his own interests, and had
met the consequences cheerfully. She had been magnanimous enough to renounce all
pride in teapots or children's frilling, and had never poured any pathetic
confidences into the ears of her feminine neighbours concerning Mr. Garth's want
of prudence and the sums he might have had if he had been like other men. Hence
these fair neighbours thought her either proud or eccentric, and sometimes spoke
of her to their husbands as »your fine Mrs. Garth.« She was not without her
criticism of them in return, being more accurately instructed than most matrons
in Middlemarch, and - where is
