Lydgate found it more and more agreeable to be with her, and there was

no constraint now, there was a delightful interchange of influence in

their eyes, and what they said had that superfluity of meaning for

them, which is observable with some sense of flatness by a third

person; still they had no interviews or asides from which a third

person need have been excluded. In fact, they flirted; and Lydgate was

secure in the belief that they did nothing else. If a man could not

love and be wise, surely he could flirt and be wise at the same time?

Really, the men in Middlemarch, except Mr. Farebrother, were great

bores, and Lydgate did not care about commercial politics or cards:

what was he to do for relaxation? He was often invited to the

Bulstrodes'; but the girls there were hardly out of the schoolroom; and

Mrs. Bulstrode's _naive_ way of conciliating piety and worldliness, the

nothingness of this life and the desirability of cut glass, the

consciousness at once of filthy rags and the best damask, was not a

sufficient relief from the weight of her husband's invariable

seriousness. The Vincys' house, with all its faults, was the

pleasanter by contrast; besides, it nourished Rosamond--sweet to look

at as a half-opened blush-rose, and adorned with accomplishments for

the refined amusement of man.

But he made some enemies, other than medical, by his success with Miss

Vincy. One evening he came into the drawing-room rather late, when

several other visitors were there. The card-table had drawn off the

elders, and Mr. Ned Plymdale (one of the good matches in Middlemarch,

though not one of its leading minds) was in tete-a-tete with Rosamond.

He had brought the last "Keepsake," the gorgeous watered-silk

publication which marked modern progress at that time; and he

considered himself very fortunate that he could be the first to look

over it with her, dwelling on the ladies and gentlemen with shiny

copper-plate cheeks and copper-plate smiles, and pointing to comic

verses as capital and sentimental stories as interesting. Rosamond was

gracious, and Mr. Ned was satisfied that he had the very best thing in

art and literature as a medium for "paying addresses"--the very thing

to please a nice girl. He had also reasons, deep rather than

ostensible, for being satisfied with his own appearance. To

superficial observers his chin had too vanishing an aspect, looking as

if it were being gradually reabsorbed. And it did indeed cause him

some difficulty about the fit of his satin stocks, for which chins were

at that time useful.

"I think the Honorable Mrs. S. is something like you," said Mr. Ned.

He kept the book open at the bewitching portrait, and looked at it

rather languishingly.




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