 strands of experience lying side by side and never compare
them with each other? Expenditure - like ugliness and errors - becomes a totally
new thing when we attach our own personality to it, and measure it by that wide
difference which is manifest (in our own sensations) between ourselves and
others. Lydgate believed himself to be careless about his dress, and he despised
a man who calculated the effects of his costume; it seemed to him only a matter
of course that he had abundance of fresh garments - such things were naturally
ordered in sheaves. It must be remembered that he had never hitherto felt the
check of importunate debt, and he walked by habit, not by self-criticism. But
the check had come.
    Its novelty made it the more irritating. He was amazed, disgusted that
conditions so foreign to all his purposes, so hatefully disconnected with the
objects he cared to occupy himself with, should have lain in ambush and clutched
him when he was unaware. And there was not only the actual debt; there was the
certainty that in his present position he must go on deepening it. Two
furnishing tradesmen at Brassing, whose bills had been incurred before his
marriage, and whom uncalculated current expenses had ever since prevented him
from paying, had repeatedly sent him unpleasant letters which had forced
themselves on his attention. This could hardly have been more galling to any
disposition than to Lydgate's, with his intense pride - his dislike of asking a
favour or being under an obligation to any one. He had scorned even to form
conjectures about Mr. Vincy's intentions on money matters, and nothing but
extremity could have induced him to apply to his father-in-law, even if he had
not been made aware in various indirect ways since his marriage that Mr. Vincy's
own affairs were not flourishing, and that the expectation of help from him
would be resented. Some men easily trust in the readiness of friends; it had
never in the former part of his life occurred to Lydgate that he should need to
do so: he had never thought what borrowing would be to him; but now that the
idea had entered his mind, he felt that he would rather incur any other
hardship. In the mean time he had no money or prospects of money; and his
practice was not getting more lucrative.
    No wonder that Lydgate had been unable to suppress all signs of inward
trouble during the last few months, and now that Rosamond was regaining
brilliant health, he meditated taking her entirely into confidence on his
difficulties. New conversance with tradesmen's bills had forced his
