“I should like to know when you left off,”
said Rosamond, “because then I might be sure
that I knew something which you did not know.”
“Mr. Lydgate would say that was not worth knowing,”
said Mr. Ned, purposely caustic.
“On the contrary,” said Lydgate, showing
no smart; but smiling with exasperating confidence
at Rosamond. “It would be worth knowing
by the fact that Miss Vincy could tell it me.”
Young Plymdale soon went to look at the whist-playing,
thinking that Lydgate was one of the most conceited,
unpleasant fellows it had ever been his ill-fortune
to meet.
“How rash you are!” said Rosamond, inwardly
delighted. “Do you see that you have given
offence?”
“What! is it Mr. Plymdale’s book?
I am sorry. I didn’t think about it.”
“I shall begin to admit what you said of yourself
when you first came here—that you are a
bear, and want teaching by the birds.”
“Well, there is a bird who can teach me what
she will. Don’t I listen to her willingly?”
To Rosamond it seemed as if she and Lydgate were as
good as engaged. That they were some time to
be engaged had long been an idea in her mind; and
ideas, we know, tend to a more solid kind of existence,
the necessary materials being at hand. It is
true, Lydgate had the counter-idea of remaining unengaged;
but this was a mere negative, a shadow east by other
resolves which themselves were capable of shrinking.
Circumstance was almost sure to be on the side of Rosamond’s
idea, which had a shaping activity and looked through
watchful blue eyes, whereas Lydgate’s lay blind
and unconcerned as a jelly-fish which gets melted
without knowing it.
That evening when he went home, he looked at his phials
to see how a process of maceration was going on, with
undisturbed interest; and he wrote out his daily notes
with as much precision as usual. The reveries
from which it was difficult for him to detach himself
were ideal constructions of something else than Rosamond’s
virtues, and the primitive tissue was still his fair
unknown. Moreover, he was beginning to feel
some zest for the growing though half-suppressed feud
between him and the other medical men, which was likely
to become more manifest, now that Bulstrode’s
method of managing the new hospital was about to be
declared; and there were various inspiriting signs
that his non-acceptance by some of Peacock’s
patients might be counterbalanced by the impression
he had produced in other quarters. Only a few
days later, when he had happened to overtake Rosamond
on the Lowick road and had got down from his horse
to walk by her side until he had quite protected her
from a passing drove, he had been stopped by a servant
on horseback with a message calling him in to a house
of some importance where Peacock had never attended;
and it was the second instance of this kind.
The servant was Sir James Chettam’s, and the
house was Lowick Manor.
