"For there can live no hatred in thine eye,

Therefore in that I cannot know thy change:

In many's looks the false heart's history

Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange:

But Heaven in thy creation did decree

That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell:

Whate'er thy thoughts or thy heart's workings be

Thy looks should nothing thence but sweetness tell."

--SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets.

At the time when Mr. Vincy uttered that presentiment about Rosamond,

she herself had never had the idea that she should be driven to make

the sort of appeal which he foresaw. She had not yet had any anxiety

about ways and means, although her domestic life had been expensive as

well as eventful. Her baby had been born prematurely, and all the

embroidered robes and caps had to be laid by in darkness. This

misfortune was attributed entirely to her having persisted in going out

on horseback one day when her husband had desired her not to do so; but

it must not be supposed that she had shown temper on the occasion, or

rudely told him that she would do as she liked.

What led her particularly to desire horse-exercise was a visit from

Captain Lydgate, the baronet's third son, who, I am sorry to say, was

detested by our Tertius of that name as a vapid fop "parting his hair

from brow to nape in a despicable fashion" (not followed by Tertius

himself), and showing an ignorant security that he knew the proper

thing to say on every topic. Lydgate inwardly cursed his own folly

that he had drawn down this visit by consenting to go to his uncle's on

the wedding-tour, and he made himself rather disagreeable to Rosamond

by saying so in private. For to Rosamond this visit was a source of

unprecedented but gracefully concealed exultation. She was so

intensely conscious of having a cousin who was a baronet's son staying

in the house, that she imagined the knowledge of what was implied by

his presence to be diffused through all other minds; and when she

introduced Captain Lydgate to her guests, she had a placid sense that

his rank penetrated them as if it had been an odor. The satisfaction

was enough for the time to melt away some disappointment in the

conditions of marriage with a medical man even of good birth: it seemed

now that her marriage was visibly as well as ideally floating her above

the Middlemarch level, and the future looked bright with letters and

visits to and from Quallingham, and vague advancement in consequence

for Tertius. Especially as, probably at the Captain's suggestion, his

married sister, Mrs. Mengan, had come with her maid, and stayed two

nights on her way from town. Hence it was clearly worth while for

Rosamond to take pains with her music and the careful selection of her

lace.




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