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CHAPTER LXXVI . To mercy , pity , peace , and love All pray in their distress , And to these virtues of delight , Return their thankfulness . . . . . . . For Mercy has a human heart , Pity a human face ; And Love , the human form divine ; And Peace , the human dress . — WILLIAM BLAKE : Songs of Innocence . Some days later , Lydgate was riding to Lowick Manor , in consequence of a summons from Dorothea . The summons had not been unexpected , since it had followed a letter from Mr . Bulstrode , in which he stated that he had resumed his arrangements for quitting Middlemarch , and must remind Lydgate of his previous communications about the Hospital , to the purport of which he still adhered . It had been his duty , before taking further steps , to reopen the subject with Mrs . Casaubon , who now wished , as before , to discuss the question with Lydgate . “ Your views may possibly have undergone some change , ” wrote Mr . Bulstrode ; “ but , in that case also , it is desirable that you should lay them before her . ” Dorothea awaited his arrival with eager interest . Though , in deference to her masculine advisers , she had refrained from what Sir James had called “ interfering in this Bulstrode business , ” the hardship of Lydgate’s position was continually in her mind , and when Bulstrode applied to her again about the hospital , she felt that the opportunity was come to her which she had been hindered from hastening . In her luxurious home , wandering under the boughs of her own great trees , her thought was going out over the lot of others , and her emotions were imprisoned . The idea of some active good within her reach , “ haunted her like a passion , ” and another’s need having once come to her as a distinct image , preoccupied her desire with the yearning to give relief , and made her own ease tasteless . She was full of confident hope about this interview with Lydgate , never heeding what was said of his personal reserve ; never heeding that she was a very young woman . Nothing could have seemed more irrelevant to Dorothea than insistence on her youth and sex when she was moved to show her human fellowship . As she sat waiting in the library , she could do nothing but live through again all the past scenes which had brought Lydgate into her memories . They all owed their significance to her marriage and its troubles — but no ; there were two occasions in which the image of Lydgate had come painfully in connection with his wife and some one else . The pain had been allayed for Dorothea , but it had left in her an awakened conjecture as to what Lydgate’s marriage might be to him , a susceptibility to the slightest hint about Mrs . Lydgate . These thoughts were like a drama to her , and made her eyes bright , and gave an attitude of suspense to her whole frame , though she was only looking out from the brown library on to the turf and the bright green buds which stood in relief against the dark evergreens .
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