 prayers he might lift up, whatever statements he might
inwardly make of this man's wretched spiritual condition, and the duty he
himself was under to submit to the punishment divinely appointed for him rather
than to wish for evil to another - through all this effort to condense words
into a solid mental state, there pierced and spread with irresistible vividness
the images of the events he desired. And in the train of those images came their
apology. He could not but see the death of Raffles, and see in it his own
deliverance. What was the removal of this wretched creature? He was impenitent -
but were not public criminals impenitent? - yet the law decided on their fate.
Should Providence in this case award death, there was no sin in contemplating
death as the desirable issue - if he kept his hands from hastening it - if he
scrupulously did what was prescribed. Even here there might be a mistake: human
prescriptions were fallible things: Lydgate had said that treatment had hastened
death, - why not his own method of treatment? But of course intention was
everything in the question of right and wrong.
    And Bulstrode set himself to keep his intention separate from his desire. He
inwardly declared that he intended to obey orders. Why should he have got into
any argument about the validity of these orders? It was only the common trick of
desire - which avails itself of any irrelevant scepticism, finding larger room
for itself in all uncertainty about effects, in every obscurity that looks like
the absence of law. Still, he did obey the orders.
    His anxieties continually glanced towards Lydgate, and his remembrance of
what had taken place between them the morning before was accompanied with
sensibilities which had not been roused at all during the actual scene. He had
then cared but little about Lydgate's painful impressions with regard to the
suggested change in the Hospital, or about the disposition towards himself which
what he held to be his justifiable refusal of a rather exorbitant request might
call forth. He recurred to the scene now with a perception that he had probably
made Lydgate his enemy, and with an awakened desire to propitiate him, or rather
to create in him a strong sense of personal obligation. He regretted that he had
not at once made even an unreasonable money-sacrifice. For in case of unpleasant
suspicions or even knowledge gathered from the raving of Raffles, Bulstrode
would have felt that he had a defence in Lydgate's mind by having conferred a
momentous benefit on him. But the regret had perhaps come too late.
    Strange, piteous conflict in the soul of this unhappy man, who had
