His departure
had been a proportionate disappointment, and had sadly increased
her weariness of Middlemarch; but at first she had the alternative
dream of pleasures in store from her intercourse with the family
at Quallingham. Since then the troubles of her married life
had deepened, and the absence of other relief encouraged her regretful
rumination over that thin romance which she had once fed on.
Men and women make sad mistakes about their own symptoms, taking their
vague uneasy longings, sometimes for genius, sometimes for religion,
and oftener still for a mighty love. Will Ladislaw had written
chatty letters, half to her and half to Lydgate, and she had replied:
their separation, she felt, was not likely to be final, and the change
she now most longed for was that Lydgate should go to live in London;
everything would be agreeable in London; and she had set to work
with quiet determination to win this result, when there came a sudden,
delightful promise which inspirited her.
It came shortly before the memorable meeting at the town-hall,
and was nothing less than a letter from Will Ladislaw to Lydgate,
which turned indeed chiefly on his new interest in plans of colonization,
but mentioned incidentally, that he might find it necessary to pay
a visit to Middlemarch within the next few weeks--a very pleasant
necessity, he said, almost as good as holidays to a schoolboy.
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