She never left Fred's side when her husband was not in the house, and

thus Rosamond was in the unusual position of being much alone.

Lydgate, naturally, never thought of staying long with her, yet it

seemed that the brief impersonal conversations they had together were

creating that peculiar intimacy which consists in shyness. They were

obliged to look at each other in speaking, and somehow the looking

could not be carried through as the matter of course which it really

was. Lydgate began to feel this sort of consciousness unpleasant and

one day looked down, or anywhere, like an ill-worked puppet. But this

turned out badly: the next day, Rosamond looked down, and the

consequence was that when their eyes met again, both were more

conscious than before. There was no help for this in science, and as

Lydgate did not want to flirt, there seemed to be no help for it in

folly. It was therefore a relief when neighbors no longer considered

the house in quarantine, and when the chances of seeing Rosamond alone

were very much reduced.

But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the

other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to

be done away with. Talk about the weather and other well-bred topics

is apt to seem a hollow device, and behavior can hardly become easy

unless it frankly recognizes a mutual fascination--which of course need

not mean anything deep or serious. This was the way in which Rosamond

and Lydgate slid gracefully into ease, and made their intercourse

lively again. Visitors came and went as usual, there was once more

music in the drawing-room, and all the extra hospitality of Mr. Vincy's

mayoralty returned. Lydgate, whenever he could, took his seat by

Rosamond's side, and lingered to hear her music, calling himself her

captive--meaning, all the while, not to be her captive. The

preposterousness of the notion that he could at once set up a

satisfactory establishment as a married man was a sufficient guarantee

against danger. This play at being a little in love was agreeable, and

did not interfere with graver pursuits. Flirtation, after all, was not

necessarily a singeing process. Rosamond, for her part, had never

enjoyed the days so much in her life before: she was sure of being

admired by some one worth captivating, and she did not distinguish

flirtation from love, either in herself or in another. She seemed to

be sailing with a fair wind just whither she would go, and her thoughts

were much occupied with a handsome house in Lowick Gate which she hoped

would by-and-by be vacant. She was quite determined, when she was

married, to rid herself adroitly of all the visitors who were not

agreeable to her at her father's; and she imagined the drawing-room in

her favorite house with various styles of furniture.




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