 - was almost as much as she had cared to
learn beyond the glimpses which Mr. Bulstrode's narrative occasionally gave of
his early bent towards religion, his inclination to be a preacher, and his
association with missionary and philanthropic efforts. She believed in him as an
excellent man whose piety carried a peculiar eminence in belonging to a layman,
whose influence had turned her own mind towards seriousness, and whose share of
perishable good had been the means of raising her own position. But she also
liked to think that it was well in every sense for Mr. Bulstrode to have won the
hand of Harriet Vincy; whose family was undeniable in a Middlemarch light - a
better light surely than any thrown in London thoroughfares or dissenting
chapel-yards. The unreformed provincial mind distrusted London; and while true
religion was everywhere saving, honest Mrs. Bulstrode was convinced that to be
saved in the Church was more respectable. She so much wished to ignore towards
others that her husband had ever been a London Dissenter, that she liked to keep
it out of sight even in talking to him. He was quite aware of this; indeed in
some respects he was rather afraid of this ingenuous wife, whose imitative piety
and native worldliness were equally sincere, who had nothing to be ashamed of,
and whom he had married out of a thorough inclination still subsisting. But his
fears were such as belong to a man who cares to maintain his recognised
supremacy: the loss of high consideration from his wife, as from every one else
who did not clearly hate him out of enmity to the truth, would be as the
beginning of death to him. When she said -
    »Is he quite gone away?«
    »Oh, I trust so,« he answered, with an effort to throw as much sober
unconcern into his tone as possible.
    But in truth Mr. Bulstrode was very far from a state of quiet trust. In the
interview at the Bank, Raffles had made it evident that his eagerness to torment
was almost as strong in him as any other greed. He had frankly said that he had
turned out of the way to come to Middlemarch, just to look about him and see
whether the neighbourhood would suit him to live in. He had certainly had a few
debts to pay more than he expected, but the two hundred pounds were not gone
yet: a cool five-and-twenty would suffice him to go away with for the present.
What he had wanted chiefly was to see his friend Nick and family, and know all
about the prosperity of a man to whom he was so
