 to call forth more of this moral activity than
Rosamond and her aunt Bulstrode. Mrs. Bulstrode was not an object of dislike,
and had never consciously injured any human being. Men had always thought her a
handsome comfortable woman, and had reckoned it among the signs of Bulstrode's
hypocrisy that he had chosen a red-blooded Vincy, instead of a ghastly and
melancholy person suited to his low esteem for earthly pleasure. When the
scandal about her husband was disclosed they remarked of her - »Ah, poor woman!
She's as honest as the day - she never suspected anything wrong in him, you may
depend on it.« Women, who were intimate with her, talked together much of »poor
Harriet,« imagined what her feelings must be when she came to know everything,
and conjectured how much she had already come to know. There was no spiteful
disposition towards her; rather, there was a busy benevolence anxious to
ascertain what it would be well for her to feel and do under the circumstances,
which of course kept the imagination occupied with her character and history
from the times when she was Harriet Vincy till now. With the review of Mrs.
Bulstrode and her position it was inevitable to associate Rosamond, whose
prospects were under the same blight with her aunt's. Rosamond was more severely
criticised and less pitied, though she too, as one of the good old Vincy family
who had always been known in Middlemarch, was regarded as a victim to marriage
with an interloper. The Vincys had their weaknesses, but then they lay on the
surface: there was never anything bad to be »found out« concerning them. Mrs.
Bulstrode was vindicated from any resemblance to her husband. Harriet's faults
were her own.
    »She has always been showy,« said Mrs. Hackbutt, making tea for a small
party, »though she has got into the way of putting her religion forward, to
conform to her husband; she has tried to hold her head up above Middlemarch by
making it known that she invites clergymen and heaven-knows-who from Riverston
and those places.«
    »We can hardly blame her for that,« said Mrs. Sprague; »because few of the
best people in the town cared to associate with Bulstrode, and she must have
somebody to sit down at her table.«
    »Mr. Thesiger has always countenanced him,« said Mrs. Hackbutt. »I think he
must be sorry now.«
    »But he was never fond of him in his heart - that every one knows,« said
Mrs
