Mr. Lydgate, of course, was out of hearing.  He had quitted the party early, and would have thought it altogether tedious but for the novelty of certain introductions, especially the introduction to Miss Brooke, whose youthful bloom, with her approaching marriage to that faded scholar, and her interest in matters socially useful, gave her the piquancy of an unusual combination.

“She is a good creature—­that fine girl—­but a little too earnest,” he thought.  “It is troublesome to talk to such women.  They are always wanting reasons, yet they are too ignorant to understand the merits of any question, and usually fall hack on their moral sense to settle things after their own taste.”

Evidently Miss Brooke was not Mr. Lydgate’s style of woman any more than Mr. Chichely’s.  Considered, indeed, in relation to the latter, whose mied was matured, she was altogether a mistake, and calculated to shock his trust in final causes, including the adaptation of fine young women to purplefaced bachelors.  But Lydgate was less ripe, and might possibly have experience before him which would modify his opinion as to the most excellent things in woman.

Miss Brooke, however, was not again seen by either of these gentlemen under her maiden name.  Not long after that dinner-party she had become Mrs. Casaubon, and was on her way to Rome.

CHAPTER XI.

“But deeds and language such as men do use,
And persons such as comedy would choose,
When she would show an image of the times,
And sport with human follies, not with crimes.” 

          
                                                          —­BEN JONSON.

Lydgate, in fact, was already conscious of being fascinated by a woman strikingly different from Miss Brooke:  he did not in the least suppose that he had lost his balance and fallen in love, but he had said of that particular woman, “She is grace itself; she is perfectly lovely and accomplished.  That is what a woman ought to be:  she ought to produce the effect of exquisite music.”  Plain women he regarded as he did the other severe facts of life, to be faced with philosophy and investigated by science.  But Rosamond Vincy seemed to have the true melodic charm; and when a man has seen the woman whom he would have chosen if he had intended to marry speedily, his remaining a bachelor will usually depend on her resolution rather than on his.  Lydgate believed that he should not marry for several years:  not marry until he had trodden out a good clear path for himself away from the broad road which was quite ready made.  He had seen Miss Vincy above his horizon almost as long as it had taken Mr. Casaubon to become engaged and married:  but this learned gentleman was possessed of a fortune; he had assembled his voluminous notes, and had made that sort of reputation which precedes performance,—­often the larger part of a