f all my actions is fallen," said an antique
personage when his chief friend was dead; and they are fortunate who
get a theatre where the audience demands their best. Certainly it
would have made a considerable difference to Fred at that time if Mary
Garth had had no decided notions as to what was admirable in character.

Mr. Garth was not at the office, and Fred rode on to his house, which
was a little way outside the town--a homely place with an orchard in
front of it, a rambling, old-fashioned, half-timbered building, which
before the town had spread had been a farm-house, but was now
surrounded with the private gardens of the townsmen. We get the fonder
of our houses if they have a physiognomy of their own, as our friends
have. The Garth family, which was rather a large one, for Mary had
four brothers and one sister, were very fond of their old house, from
which all the best furniture had long been sold. Fred liked it too,
knowing it by heart even to the attic which smelt deliciously of apples
and quinces, and until to-day he had never come to it without pleasant
expectations; but his heart beat uneasily now with the sense that he
should probably have to make his confession before Mrs. Garth, of whom
he was rather more in awe than of her husband. Not that she was
inclined to sarcasm and to impulsive sallies, as Mary was. In her
present matronly age at least, Mrs. Garth never committed herself by
over-hasty speech; having, as she said, borne the yoke in her youth,
and learned self-control. She had that rare sense which discerns what
is unalterable, and submits to it without murmuring. Adoring her
husband's virtues, she had very early made up her mind to his
incapacity of minding his own interests, and had met the consequences
cheerfully. She had been magnanimous enough to renounce all pride in
teapots or children's frilling, and had never poured any pathetic
confidences into the ears of her feminine neighbors concerning Mr.
Garth's want of prudence and the sums he might have had if he had been
like other men. Hence these fair neighbors thought her either proud or
eccentric, and sometimes spoke of her to their husbands as "your fine
Mrs. Garth." She was not without her criticism of them in return, being
more accurately instructed than most matrons in Middlemarch, and--where
is the blameless woman?--apt to be a little severe towards her own sex,
which in her opinion was framed to be entirely subordinate. On th