Unexpected Encounters and Social Boundaries — Middlemarch

Two days after the Yew-tree Walk, Dorothea drives into Middlemarch alone to ask Lydgate whether Casaubon has concealed depressing symptoms or insisted on knowing the utmost about his illness. She feels almost guilty seeking knowledge from another, but dread of ignorance that would make her unjust or hard overcomes every scruple. Poor Dorothea needs stores of patience; her husband has begun a new method of arranging his notes and associated her newly in carrying out his plan.

Lydgate is not at home. Dorothea asks for Rosamond and hears a man's voice and piano roulades break off when she is announced. Eliot contrasts Dorothea's thin white woollen pelisse and candid gravity with Rosamond's perfect pale-blue dress, rings, and expensive substitute for simplicity. Will Ladislaw comes forward; Dorothea colors with surprise but greets him with unmistakable pleasure. When he offers to fetch Lydgate at the Hospital, her mind flashes over connected memories and she decides to go herself, leaves hardly conscious of Will opening the door and offering his arm, and drives away in a chill silence.

In the carriage Dorothea grasps that allowing further intercourse with Will she cannot mention to Casaubon would be deception, and her medical errand is already concealment. Will singing with Rosamond in Lydgate's absence returns to her; perhaps she has been mistaken in many things, tears come, and Will's image is mysteriously spoiled. Will, mortified, knows she saw him not supremely occupied with her; he returns to Rosamond, speaks of perfect presence, and leaves pettishly. Rosamond tells Lydgate she thinks Will adores Mrs. Casaubon; he says poor devil and predicts Dorothea may give the New Hospital two hundred a year.