, and make a pitiful effort to get acquittal
for himself by howling against another. »I shall do as I think right, and
explain to nobody. They will try to starve me out, but --« he was going on with
an obstinate resolve, but he was getting near home, and the thought of Rosamond
urged itself again into that chief place from which it had been thrust by the
agonised struggles of wounded honour and pride.
    How would Rosamond take it all? Here was another weight of chain to drag,
and poor Lydgate was in a bad mood for bearing her dumb mastery. He had no
impulse to tell her the trouble which must soon be common to them both. He
preferred waiting for the incidental disclosure which events must soon bring
about.
 

                                 Chapter LXXIV

            »Mercifully grant that we may grow aged together.«
                                                 Book of Tobit: Marriage Prayer.
 
In Middlemarch a wife could not long remain ignorant that the town held a bad
opinion of her husband. No feminine intimate might carry her friendship so far
as to make a plain statement to the wife of the unpleasant fact known or
believed about her husband; but when a woman with her thoughts much at leisure
got them suddenly employed on something grievously disadvantageous to her
neighbours, various moral impulses were called into play which tended to
stimulate utterance. Candour was one. To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology,
meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not
take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a
robust candour never waited to be asked for its opinion. Then, again, there was
the love of truth - a wide phrase, but meaning in this relation, a lively
objection to seeing a wife look happier than her husband's character warranted,
or manifest too much satisfaction in her lot: the poor thing should have some
hint given her that if she knew the truth she would have less complacency in her
bonnet, and in light dishes for a supper-party. Stronger than all, there was the
regard for a friend's moral improvement, sometimes called her soul, which was
likely to be benefited by remarks tending to gloom, uttered with the
accompaniment of pensive staring at the furniture and a manner implying that the
speaker would not tell what was on her mind, from regard to the feelings of her
hearer. On the whole, one might say that an ardent charity was at work setting
the virtuous mind to make a neighbour unhappy for her good.
    There were hardly any wives in Middlemarch whose matrimonial misfortunes
would in different ways be likely
