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thought it worth while to speak of Mary Garth in that light.
Nothing escaped Lydgate in Rosamond’s graceful behavior:
how delicately she waived the notice which the old man’s
want of taste had thrust upon her by a quiet gravity, not
showing her dimples on the wrong occasion, but showing
them afterwards in speaking to Mary, to whom she ad-
dressed herself with so much good-natured interest, that
Lydgate, after quickly examining Mary more fully than he
had done before, saw an adorable kindness in Rosamond’s
eyes. But Mary from some cause looked rather out of tem-
per.
‘Miss Rosy has been singing me a song—you’ve nothing
to say against that, eh, doctor?’ said Mr. Featherstone. ‘I like
it better than your physic.’
‘That has made me forget how the time was going,’ said
Rosamond, rising to reach her hat, which she had laid aside
before singing, so that her flower-like head on its white
stem was seen in perfection above-her riding-habit. ‘Fred,
we must really go.’
‘Very good,’ said Fred, who had his own reasons for not
being in the best spirits, and wanted to get away.
‘Miss Vincy is a musician?’ said Lydgate, following her
with his eyes. (Every nerve and muscle in Rosamond was
adjusted to the consciousness that she was being looked
at. She was by nature an actress of parts that entered into
her physique: she even acted her own character, and so well,
that she did not know it to be precisely her own.)
‘The best in Middlemarch, I’ll be bound,’ said Mr. Feath-
erstone, ‘let the next be who she will. Eh, Fred? Speak up for