The Dark Night of the Soul — Middlemarch

Dorothea dines at the Farebrother parsonage after Freshitt, busies herself at the schoolhouse and with Master Bunney's soil wisdom, then hears Miss Noble's Ladislaw lozenge-box and Henrietta's line about his shoes. Her heart races; she flees overtired, and Farebrother misreads Lydgate as the cause of her distress.

Alone at Lowick she moans that she did love him, spends the night in anguish on the bare floor between two images: Will near and Will aloof as detected illusion, with anger and Rome-born hope torn away. She sleeps sobbing, wakes into sorrow as companion, and relives yesterday as bound to Rosamond's life.

She asks what to do for three lives if she could silence her pain: Lydgate's, Rosamond's, and her own mistaken certainty about Will's honor. Seeing laborers at dawn, she refuses selfish complaining, dresses in lighter mourning as initiation, and chooses action over collapse on the bare floor where she spent the night.

At eleven she walks quietly toward Middlemarch to make a second attempt to see and save Rosamond. Dorothy should read LXXX as grief turned outward: Dorothea's night on the floor becomes the morning walk that will unlock confession at the Lydgate hearth and spare three lives from the worst misreading.