Even here there might be a mistake:
human prescriptions were fallible things: Lydgate had said that
treatment had hastened death,--why not his own method of treatment?
But of course intention was everything in the question of right
and wrong.
And Bulstrode set himself to keep his intention separate from
his desire. He inwardly declared that he intended to obey orders.
Why should he have got into any argument about the validity of
these orders? It was only the common trick of desire--which avails
itself of any irrelevant scepticism, finding larger room for itself
in all uncertainty about effects, in every obscurity that looks
like the absence of law. Still, he did obey the orders.
His anxieties continually glanced towards Lydgate, and his remembrance
of what had taken place between them the morning before was accompanied
with sensibilities which had not been roused at all during the
actual scene. He had then cared but little about Lydgate's painful
impressions with regard to the suggested change in the Hospital,
or about the disposition towards himself which what he held to be his
justifiable refusal of a rather exorbitant request might call forth.
He recurred to the scene now with a perception that he had probably
made Lydgate his enemy, and with an awakened desire to propitiate him,
or rather to create in him a strong sense of personal obligation.
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