, who
mentioned it to her daughter-in-law of the house of Toller, who mentioned it
generally. The business was felt to be so public and important that it required
dinners to feed it, and many invitations were just then issued and accepted on
the strength of this scandal concerning Bulstrode and Lydgate; wives, widows,
and single ladies took their work and went out to tea oftener than usual; and
all public conviviality, from the Green Dragon to Dollop's, gathered a zest
which could not be won from the question whether the Lords would throw out the
Reform Bill.
    For hardly anybody doubted that some scandalous reason or other was at the
bottom of Bulstrode's liberality to Lydgate. Mr. Hawley, indeed, in the first
instance, invited a select party, including the two physicians, with Mr. Toller
and Mr. Wrench, expressly to hold a close discussion as to the probabilities of
Raffle's illness, reciting to them all the particulars which had been gathered
from Mrs. Abel in connection with Lydgate's certificate, that the death was due
to delirium tremens; and the medical gentlemen, who all stood undisturbedly on
the old paths in relation to this disease, declared that they could see nothing
in these particulars which could be transformed into a positive ground of
suspicion. But the moral grounds of suspicion remained: the strong motives
Bulstrode clearly had for wishing to be rid of Raffles, and the fact that at
this critical moment he had given Lydgate the help which he must for some time
have known the need for; the disposition, moreover, to believe that Bulstrode
would be unscrupulous, and the absence of any indisposition to believe that
Lydgate might be as easily bribed as other haughty-minded men when they have
found themselves in want of money. Even if the money had been given merely to
make him hold his tongue about the scandal of Bulstrode's earlier life, the fact
threw an odious light on Lydgate, who had long been sneered at as making himself
subservient to the banker for the sake of working himself into predominance, and
discrediting the elder members of his profession. Hence, in spite of the
negative as to any direct sign of guilt in relation to the death at Stone Court,
Mr. Hawley's select party broke up with the sense that the affair had »an ugly
look.«
    But this vague conviction of indeterminable guilt, which was enough to keep
up much head-shaking and biting innuendo even among substantial professional
seniors, had for the general mind all the superior power of mystery over fact.
Everybody liked better to conjecture how
