When Good Men Face Temptation — Middlemarch

Lydgate's practice acts as beneficent harness against debt and marital loneliness; he once tried opium, despises drink and ordinary gambling, yet now wistfully imagines easy money without asking anyone for help. Eliot honours clinical mercy before showing its limits: many would name a medical man the kindest they ever knew.

He enters the Green Dragon billiard-room to see Bambridge about selling his good horse, plays one game, bets on his own strokes, wins, then loses as young Hawley arrives and the devil's bait toward Brassing narrows his mind to a crevice of excited eyes and clutching coin.

Fred Vincy, slipping back during Mary's absence, is shocked to see his once-priggish brother-in-law betting with narrow excitement; he invents a pretext about Rosy and Farebrother waiting below, and Lydgate wakes from absorption, ashamed, and leaves the room he once judged.

Farebrother walks Fred toward St. Botolph's, quotes gossip about nightly billiards, admits temptation to let Fred fail for Mary's sake, then chooses warning over rivalry and asks him to make her happy. Both men walk under the stars recalculating love and duty: one ashamed doctor, one reformed youth recalled to worth before Lydgate must beg Bulstrode next while Fred keeps Garth's chain instead of the cue.