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life might be made better. But he had more reason than ever
for trusting his judgment, now that it was so experienced;
and henceforth he would take a strictly scientific view of
woman, entertaining no expectations but such as were jus-
tified beforehand.
No one in Middle march was likely to have such a notion
of Lydgate’s past as has here been faintly shadowed, and in-
deed the respectable townsfolk there were not more given
than mortals generally to any eager attempt at exactness in
the representation to themselves of what did not come un-
der their own senses. Not only young virgins of that town,
but gray-bearded men also, were often in haste to conjecture
how a new acquaintance might be wrought into their pur-
poses, contented with very vague knowledge as to the way
in which life had been shaping him for that instrumentality.
Middlemarch, in fact, counted on swallowing Lydgate and
assimilating him very comfortably.