y-and-by--but they didn't give me time. I should have
gone into the Bill by-and-by, you know," he added, glancing at
Ladislaw. "However, things will come all right at the nomination."

But it was not resolved unanimously that things would come right; on
the contrary, the committee looked rather grim, and the political
personage from Brassing was writing busily, as if he were brewing new
devices.

"It was Bowyer who did it," said Mr. Standish, evasively. "I know it
as well as if he had been advertised. He's uncommonly good at
ventriloquism, and he did it uncommonly well, by God! Hawley has been
having him to dinner lately: there's a fund of talent in Bowyer."

"Well, you know, you never mentioned him to me, Standish, else I would
have invited him to dine," said poor Mr. Brooke, who had gone through a
great deal of inviting for the good of his country.

"There's not a more paltry fellow in Middlemarch than Bowyer," said
Ladislaw, indignantly, "but it seems as if the paltry fellows were
always to turn the scale."

Will was thoroughly out of temper with himself as well as with his
"principal," and he went to shut himself in his rooms with a
half-formed resolve to throw up the "Pioneer" and Mr. Brooke together.
Why should he stay? If the impassable gulf between himself and
Dorothea were ever to be filled up, it must rather be by his going away
and getting into a thoroughly different position than by staying here
and slipping into deserved contempt as an understrapper of Brooke's.
Then came the young dream of wonders that he might do--in five years,
for example: political writing, political speaking, would get a higher
value now public life was going to be wider and more national, and they
might give him such distinction that he would not seem to be asking
Dorothea to step down to him. Five years:--if he could only be sure
that she cared for him more than for others; if he could only make her
aware that he stood aloof until he could tell his love without lowering
himself--then he could go away easily, and begin a career which at
five-and-twenty seemed probable enough in the inward order of things,
where talent brings fame, and fame everything else which is delightful.
He could speak and he could write; he could master any subject if he
chose, and he meant always to take the side of reason and justice, on
which he would carry all his ardor. Why should he not one day be
lifted above the shoulders of the crowd, and