his honour that he has never borrowed money on the
pretence of any understanding about his uncle's land. He is not a liar. I don't
want to make him better than he is. I have blown him up well - nobody can say I
wink at what he does. But he is not a liar. And I should have thought - but I
may be wrong - that there was no religion to hinder a man from believing the
best of a young fellow, when you don't know worse. It seems to me it would be a
poor sort of religion to put a spoke in his wheel by refusing to say you don't
believe such harm of him as you've got no good reason to believe.«
    »I am not at all sure that I should be befriending your son by smoothing his
way to the future possession of Featherstone's property. I cannot regard wealth
as a blessing to those who use it simply as a harvest for this world. You do not
like to hear these things, Vincy, but on this occasion I feel called upon to
tell you that I have no motive for furthering such a disposition of property as
that which you refer to. I do not shrink from saying that it will not tend to
your son's eternal welfare or to the glory of God. Why then should you expect me
to pen this kind of affidavit, which has no object but to keep up a foolish
partiality and secure a foolish bequest?«
    »If you mean to hinder everybody from having money but saints and
evangelists, you must give up some profitable partnerships, that's all I can
say,« Mr. Vincy burst out very bluntly. »It may be for the glory of God, but it
is not for the glory of the Middlemarch trade, that Plymdale's house uses those
blue and green dyes it gets from the Brassing manufactory; they rot the silk,
that's all I know about it. Perhaps if other people knew so much of the profit
went to the glory of God, they might like it better. But I don't mind so much
about that - I could get up a pretty row, if I chose.«
    Mr. Bulstrode paused a little before he answered. »You pain me very much by
speaking in this way, Vincy. I do not expect you to understand my grounds of
action - it is not an easy thing even to thread a path for principles in the
intricacies of the world - still less to make the thread clear for the careless
and the