Rosamond and Mary had been talking faster than their male friends.

They did not think of sitting down, but stood at the toilet-table near

the window while Rosamond took off her hat, adjusted her veil, and

applied little touches of her finger-tips to her hair--hair of

infantine fairness, neither flaxen nor yellow. Mary Garth seemed all

the plainer standing at an angle between the two nymphs--the one in the

glass, and the one out of it, who looked at each other with eyes of

heavenly blue, deep enough to hold the most exquisite meanings an

ingenious beholder could put into them, and deep enough to hide the

meanings of the owner if these should happen to be less exquisite.

Only a few children in Middlemarch looked blond by the side of

Rosamond, and the slim figure displayed by her riding-habit had

delicate undulations. In fact, most men in Middlemarch, except her

brothers, held that Miss Vincy was the best girl in the world, and some

called her an angel. Mary Garth, on the contrary, had the aspect of an

ordinary sinner: she was brown; her curly dark hair was rough and

stubborn; her stature was low; and it would not be true to declare, in

satisfactory antithesis, that she had all the virtues. Plainness has

its peculiar temptations and vices quite as much as beauty; it is apt

either to feign amiability, or, not feigning it, to show all the

repulsiveness of discontent: at any rate, to be called an ugly thing in

contrast with that lovely creature your companion, is apt to produce

some effect beyond a sense of fine veracity and fitness in the phrase.

At the age of two-and-twenty Mary had certainly not attained that

perfect good sense and good principle which are usually recommended to

the less fortunate girl, as if they were to be obtained in quantities

ready mixed, with a flavor of resignation as required. Her shrewdness

had a streak of satiric bitterness continually renewed and never

carried utterly out of sight, except by a strong current of gratitude

towards those who, instead of telling her that she ought to be

contented, did something to make her so. Advancing womanhood had

tempered her plainness, which was of a good human sort, such as the

mothers of our race have very commonly worn in all latitudes under a

more or less becoming headgear. Rembrandt would have painted her with

pleasure, and would have made her broad features look out of the canvas

with intelligent honesty. For honesty, truth-telling fairness, was

Mary's reigning virtue: she neither tried to create illusions, nor

indulged in them for her own behoof, and when she was in a good mood

she had humor enough in her to laugh at herself. When she and Rosamond

happened both to be reflected in the glass, she said, laughingly--




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