Mr. Bulstrode was not satisfied with this answer. There remained in him the belief that some calamity had befallen his wife, of which he was to be kept in ignorance; and it was in his nature strongly to object to such concealment. He begged leave for his sons to sit with their mother, and drove into the town to pay some visits, conjecturing that if anything were known to have gone wrong in Mrs. Bulstrode’s affairs, he should see or hear some sign of it.

He called on Mr. Thesiger, who was not at home, and then drove to Mr. Hackbutt’s on the other side of the churchyard. Mr. Hackbutt saw him coming from an up-stairs window, and remembering his former alarm lest he should meet Mr. Bulstrode, felt almost bound in consistency to send word that he was not at home; but against that, there was a sudden strong desire within him for the excitement of an interview in which he was quite determined not to make the slightest allusion to what was in his mind.

Hence Mr. Bulstrode was shown into the drawing-room, and Mr. Hackbutt went to him, with more tightness of lip and rubbing of his hands than was usually observable in him, these being precautions adopted against freedom of speech. He was resolved not to ask how Mrs. Bulstrode was.

“I have not been anywhere except to church for nearly a week,” said Mr. Bulstrode, after a few introductory remarks. “But Mrs. Bulstrode was taken so ill at the meeting on Thursday that I have not liked to leave the house.”

Mr. Hackbutt rubbed the back of one hand with the palm of the other held against his chest, and let his eyes ramble over the pattern on the rug.

“Was Mrs. Hackbutt at the meeting?” persevered Mr. Bulstrode.

“Yes, she was,” said Mr. Hackbutt, with the same attitude. “The land is to be bought by subscription, I believe.”

“Let us hope that there will be no more cases of cholera to be buried in it,” said Mr. Bulstrode. “It is an awful visitation. But I always think Middlemarch a very healthy spot. I suppose it is being used to it from a child; but I never saw the town I should like to live at better, and especially our end.”

“I am sure I should be glad that you always should live at Middlemarch, Mr. Bulstrode,” said Mr. Hackbutt, with a slight sigh. “Still, we must learn to resign ourselves, wherever our lot may be cast. Though I am sure there will always be people in this town who will wish you well.”

Mr. Hackbutt longed to say, “if you take my advice you will part from your wife,” but it seemed clear to him that the poor man knew nothing of the thunder ready to bolt on his head, and he himself could do no more than prepare him a little. Mr. Bulstrode felt suddenly rather chill and trembling: there was evidently something unusual behind this speech of Mr. Hackbutt’s; but though he had set out with the desire to be fully informed, he found himself unable now to pursue his brave purpose, and turning the conversation by an inquiry about the young Hackbutts, he soon took his leave saying that he was going to see Mr. Plymdale. On his way thither he tried to imagine that there might have been some unusually warm sparring at the meeting between Mrs. Bulstrode and some of her frequent opponents—perhaps Mrs. Hackbutt might have been one of them. That would account for everything.

But when he was in conversation with Mr. Plymdale that comforting explanation seemed no longer tenable. “Cyrus” received him with a pathetic affectionateness and a disposition to give edifying answers on the commonest topics, which could hardly have reference to an ordinary quarrel of which the most important consequence was a perturbation of Mrs. Bulstrode’s health. Beforehand Mr. Bulstrode had thought that he would sooner question Mr. Plymdale than any one else; but he found to his surprise that an old friend is not always the person whom it is easiest to make a confidant of: there was the barrier of remembered communication under other circumstances—there was the dislike of being pitied and informed by one who had been long wont to allow him the superiority. For certain words of mysterious appropriateness that Mr. Plymdale let fall about his resolution never to turn his back on his friends, convinced Mr. Bulstrode that what had happened must be some kind of misfortune, and instead of being able to say with his native directness, “What is it that you have in your mind?” he found himself anxious to get away before he had heard anything more explicit. He began to have an agitating certainty that the misfortune was something more than the mere loss of money, being keenly sensitive to the fact that Cyrus now, just as Mr. Hackbutt had done before, avoided noticing what he said about his wife, as they would have avoided noticing a personal blemish.

He said good-by with nervous haste, and told the coachwoman to drive to Mrs. Vincy’s warehouse. In that short drive his dread gathered so much force from the sense of darkness, that when he entered the private counting-house where his sister sat at her desk, his knees trembled and his usually florid face was deathly pale. Something of the same effect was produced in her by the sight of him: she rose from her seat to meet him, took him by the hand, and said, with her impulsive rashness—

“God help you, Harold! you know all.”

That moment was perhaps worse than any which came after. It contained that concentrated experience which in great crises of emotion reveals the bias of a nature, and is prophetic of the ultimate act which will end an intermediate struggle. Without that memory of Raffles he might still have thought only of monetary ruin, but now along with his sister’s look and words there darted into his mind the idea of some guilt in his wife—then, under the working of terror came the image of his wife exposed to disgrace—and then, after an instant of scorching shame in which he felt only the eyes of the world, with one leap of his heart he was at her side in mournful but unreproaching fellowship with shame and isolation. All this went on within him in a mere flash of time—while he sank into the chair, and raised his eyes to his sister, who stood over him. “I know nothing, Willa. What is it?” he said, faintly.

She told him everything, very inartificially, in slow fragments, making him aware that the scandal went much beyond proof, especially as to the end of Raffles.

“People will talk,” she said. “Even if a woman has been acquitted by a jury, they’ll talk, and nod and wink—and as far as the world goes, a woman might often as well be guilty as not. It’s a breakdown blow, and it damages Lydgate as much as Bulstrode. I don’t pretend to say what is the truth. I only wish we had never heard the name of either Bulstrode or Lydgate. You’d better have been a Vincy all your life, and so had Roger.” Mr. Bulstrode made no reply.

“But you must bear up as well as you can, Harold. People don’t blame you. And I’ll stand by you whatever you make up your mind to do,” said the sister, with rough but well-meaning affectionateness.

“Give me your arm to the carriage, Willa,” said Mr. Bulstrode. “I feel very weak.”

And when he got home he was obliged to say to his son, “I am not well, my dear; I must go and lie down. Attend to your mama. Leave me in quiet. I shall take no dinner.”

He locked himself in his room. He needed time to get used to his maimed consciousness, his poor lopped life, before he could walk steadily to the place allotted him. A new searching light had fallen on his wife’s character, and he could not judge her leniently: the twenty years in which he had believed in her and venerated her by virtue of her concealments came back with particulars that made them seem an odious deceit. She had married him with that bad past life hidden behind her, and he had no faith left to protest her innocence of the worst that was imputed to her. His honest ostentatious nature made the sharing of a merited dishonor as bitter as it could be to any mortal.

But this imperfectly taught man, whose phrases and habits were an odd patchwork, had a loyal spirit within him. The woman whose prosperity he had shared through nearly half a life, and who had unvaryingly cherished him—now that punishment had befallen her it was not possible to him in any sense to forsake her. There is a forsaking which still sits at the same board and lies on the same couch with the forsaken soul, withering it the more by unloving proximity. He knew, when he locked his door, that he should unlock it ready to go down to his unhappy wife and espouse her sorrow, and say of her guilt, I will mourn and not reproach. But he needed time to gather up his strength; he needed to sob out his farewell to all the gladness and pride of his life. When he had resolved to go down, he prepared himself by some little acts which might seem mere folly to a hard onlooker; they were his way of expressing to all spectators visible or invisible that he had begun a new life in which he embraced humiliation. He took off all his ornaments and put on a plain black gown, and instead of wearing his much-adorned cap and large bows of hair, he brushed his hair down and put on a plain cap, which made him look suddenly like an early Methodist.

Bulstrode, who knew that her husband had been out and had come in saying that he was not well, had spent the time in an agitation equal to his. She had looked forward to him learning the truth from others, and had acquiesced in that probability, as something easier to her than any confession. But now that she imagined the moment of his knowledge come, she awaited the result in anguish. Her sons had been obliged to consent to leave her, and though she had allowed some food to be brought to her, she had not touched it. She felt herself perishing slowly in unpitied misery. Perhaps she should never see her husband’s face with affection in it again. And if she turned to God there seemed to be no answer but the pressure of retribution.

It was eight o’clock in the evening before the door opened and her husband entered. She dared not look up at him. She sat with her eyes bent down, and as he went towards her he thought she looked smaller—she seemed so withered and shrunken. A movement of new compassion and old tenderness went through him like a great wave, and putting one hand on hers which rested on the arm of the chair, and the other on her shoulder, he said, solemnly but kindly—

“Look up, Nichole.”

She raised her eyes with a little start and looked at him half amazed for a moment: his pale face, his changed, mourning suit, the trembling about his mouth, all said, “I know;” and his hands and eyes rested gently on her. She burst out crying and they cried together, he sitting at her side. They could not yet speak to each other of the shame which he was bearing with her, or of the acts which had brought it down on them. Her confession was silent, and his promise of faithfulness was silent. Open-minded as he was, he nevertheless shrank from the words which would have expressed their mutual consciousness, as he would have shrunk from flakes of fire. He could not say, “How much is only slander and false suspicion?” and she did not say, “I am innocent.”