Her singing was less remarkable, but also well trained, and sweet to

hear as a chime perfectly in tune. It is true she sang "Meet me by

moonlight," and "I've been roaming"; for mortals must share the

fashions of their time, and none but the ancients can be always

classical. But Rosamond could also sing "Black-eyed Susan" with

effect, or Haydn's canzonets, or "Voi, che sapete," or "Batti,

batti"--she only wanted to know what her audience liked.

Her father looked round at the company, delighting in their admiration.

Her mother sat, like a Niobe before her troubles, with her youngest

little girl on her lap, softly beating the child's hand up and down in

time to the music. And Fred, notwithstanding his general scepticism

about Rosy, listened to her music with perfect allegiance, wishing he

could do the same thing on his flute. It was the pleasantest family

party that Lydgate had seen since he came to Middlemarch. The Vincys

had the readiness to enjoy, the rejection of all anxiety, and the

belief in life as a merry lot, which made a house exceptional in most

county towns at that time, when Evangelicalism had cast a certain

suspicion as of plague-infection over the few amusements which survived

in the provinces. At the Vincys' there was always whist, and the

card-tables stood ready now, making some of the company secretly

impatient of the music. Before it ceased Mr. Farebrother came in--a

handsome, broad-chested but otherwise small man, about forty, whose

black was very threadbare: the brilliancy was all in his quick gray

eyes. He came like a pleasant change in the light, arresting little

Louisa with fatherly nonsense as she was being led out of the room by

Miss Morgan, greeting everybody with some special word, and seeming to

condense more talk into ten minutes than had been held all through the

evening. He claimed from Lydgate the fulfilment of a promise to come

and see him. "I can't let you off, you know, because I have some

beetles to show you. We collectors feel an interest in every new man

till he has seen all we have to show him."

But soon he swerved to the whist-table, rubbing his hands and saying,

"Come now, let us be serious! Mr. Lydgate? not play? Ah! you are too

young and light for this kind of thing."

Lydgate said to himself that the clergyman whose abilities were so

painful to Mr. Bulstrode, appeared to have found an agreeable resort in

this certainly not erudite household. He could half understand it: the

good-humor, the good looks of elder and younger, and the provision for

passing the time without any labor of intelligence, might make the

house beguiling to people who had no particular use for their odd hours.




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