1 Middlemarch‘Oh, blameless people are always the most exasperating.
There is the bell—I think we must go down.’
‘I did not mean to quarrel,’ said Rosamond, putting on
her hat.
‘Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarrelled. If one is
not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being
friends?’
‘Am I to repeat what you have said?’ ‘Just as you please.
I never say what I am afraid of having repeated. But let us
go down.’
Mr. Lydgate was rather late this morning, but the visitors
stayed long enough to see him; for Mr. Featherstone asked
Rosamond to sing to him, and she herself was-so kind as to
propose a second favorite song of his—‘Flow on, thou shin-
ing river’—after she had sung ‘Home, sweet home’ (which
she detested). This hard-headed old Overreach approved of
the sentimental song, as the suitable garnish for girls, and
also as fundamentally fine, sentiment being the right thing
for a song.
Mr. Featherstone was still applauding the last perfor-
mance, and assuring missy that her voice was as clear as a
blackbird’s, when Mr. Lydgate’s horse passed the window.
His dull expectation of the usual disagreeable routine
with an aged patient—who can hardly believe that medi-
cine would not ‘set him up’ if the doctor were only clever
enough—added to his general disbelief in Middlemarch
charms, made a doubly effective background to this vision
of Rosamond, whom old Featherstone made haste osten-
tatiously to introduce as his niece, though he had never