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CHAPTER LXVIII . What suit of grace hath Virtue to put on If Vice shall wear as good , and do as well ? If Wrong , if Craft , if Indiscretion Act as fair parts with ends as laudable ? Which all this mighty volume of events The world , the universal map of deeds , Strongly controls , and proves from all descents , That the directest course still best succeeds . For should not grave and learn’d Experience That looks with the eyes of all the world beside , And with all ages holds intelligence , Go safer than Deceit without a guide ! — DANIEL : Musophilus . That change of plan and shifting of interest which Bulstrode stated or betrayed in his conversation with Lydgate , had been determined in him by some severe experience which he had gone through since the epoch of Mr . Larcher’s sale , when Raffles had recognized Will Ladislaw , and when the banker had in vain attempted an act of restitution which might move Divine Providence to arrest painful consequences . His certainty that Raffles , unless he were dead , would return to Middlemarch before long , had been justified . On Christmas Eve he had reappeared at The Shrubs . Bulstrode was at home to receive him , and hinder his communication with the rest of the family , but he could not altogether hinder the circumstances of the visit from compromising himself and alarming his wife . Raffles proved more unmanageable than he had shown himself to be in his former appearances , his chronic state of mental restlessness , the growing effect of habitual intemperance , quickly shaking off every impression from what was said to him . He insisted on staying in the house , and Bulstrode , weighing two sets of evils , felt that this was at least not a worse alternative than his going into the town . He kept him in his own room for the evening and saw him to bed , Raffles all the while amusing himself with the annoyance he was causing this decent and highly prosperous fellow - sinner , an amusement which he facetiously expressed as sympathy with his friend’s pleasure in entertaining a man who had been serviceable to him , and who had not had all his earnings . There was a cunning calculation under this noisy joking — a cool resolve to extract something the handsomer from Bulstrode as payment for release from this new application of torture . But his cunning had a little overcast its mark . Bulstrode was indeed more tortured than the coarse fibre of Raffles could enable him to imagine . He had told his wife that he was simply taking care of this wretched creature , the victim of vice , who might otherwise injure himself ; he implied , without the direct form of falsehood , that there was a family tie which bound him to this care , and that there were signs of mental alienation in Raffles which urged caution . He would himself drive the unfortunate being away the next morning . In these hints he felt that he was supplying Mrs . Bulstrode with precautionary information for his daughters and servants , and accounting for his allowing no one but himself to enter the room even with food and drink . But he sat in an agony of fear lest Raffles should be overheard in his loud and plain references to past facts — lest Mrs . Bulstrode should be even tempted to listen at the door . How could he hinder her , how betray his terror by opening the door to detect her ? She was a woman of honest direct habits , and little likely to take so low a course in order to arrive at painful knowledge ; but fear was stronger than the calculation of probabilities .
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