strode in dread of Raffles there flashed the thought that the dread
might have something to do with his munificence towards his medical
man; and though he resisted the suggestion that it had been consciously
accepted in any way as a bribe, he had a foreboding that this
complication of things might be of malignant effect on Lydgate's
reputation. He perceived that Mr. Hawley knew nothing at present of
the sudden relief from debt, and he himself was careful to glide away
from all approaches towards the subject.

"Well," he said, with a deep breath, wanting to wind up the illimitable
discussion of what might have been, though nothing could be legally
proven, "it is a strange story. So our mercurial Ladislaw has a queer
genealogy! A high-spirited young lady and a musical Polish patriot
made a likely enough stock for him to spring from, but I should never
have suspected a grafting of the Jew pawnbroker. However, there's no
knowing what a mixture will turn out beforehand. Some sorts of dirt
serve to clarify."

"It's just what I should have expected," said Mr. Hawley, mounting his
horse. "Any cursed alien blood, Jew, Corsican, or Gypsy."

"I know he's one of your black sheep, Hawley. But he is really a
disinterested, unworldly fellow," said Mr. Farebrother, smiling.

"Ay, ay, that is your Whiggish twist," said Mr. Hawley, who had been in
the habit of saying apologetically that Farebrother was such a damned
pleasant good-hearted fellow you would mistake him for a Tory.

Mr. Hawley rode home without thinking of Lydgate's attendance on
Raffles in any other light than as a piece of evidence on the side of
Bulstrode. But the news that Lydgate had all at once become able not
only to get rid of the execution in his house but to pay all his debts
in Middlemarch was spreading fast, gathering round it conjectures and
comments which gave it new body and impetus, and soon filling the ears
of other persons besides Mr. Hawley, who were not slow to see a
significant relation between this sudden command of money and
Bulstrode's desire to stifle the scandal of Raffles. That the money
came from Bulstrode would infallibly have been guessed even if there
had been no direct evidence of it; for it had beforehand entered into
the gossip about Lydgate's affairs, that neither his father-in-law nor
his own family would do anything for him, and direct evidence was
furnished not only by a clerk at the Bank, but by innocent Mrs.
Bulstrode her