 jurisprudence ought not to be left to the chance of decent
knowledge in a medical witness, and the coroner ought not to be a man who will
believe that strychnine will destroy the coats of the stomach if an ignorant
practitioner happens to tell him so.«
    Lydgate had really lost sight of the fact that Mr. Chichely was his
Majesty's coroner, and ended innocently with the question, »Don't you agree with
me, Dr. Sprague?«
    »To a certain extent - with regard to populous districts, and in the
metropolis,« said the Doctor. »But I hope it will be long before this part of
the country loses the services of my friend Chichely, even though it might get
the best man in our profession to succeed him. I am sure Vincy will agree with
me.«
    »Yes, yes, give me a coroner who is a good coursing man,« said Mr. Vincy,
jovially. »And in my opinion, you're safest with a lawyer. Nobody can know
everything. Most things are visitation of God. And as to poisoning, why, what
you want to know is the law. Come, shall we join the ladies?«
    Lydgate's private opinion was that Mr. Chichely might be the very coroner
without bias as to the coats of the stomach, but he had not meant to be
personal. This was one of the difficulties of moving in good Middlemarch
society: it was dangerous to insist on knowledge as a qualification for any
salaried office. Fred Vincy had called Lydgate a prig, and now Mr. Chichely was
inclined to call him prickeared; especially when, in the drawing-room, he seemed
to be making himself eminently agreeable to Rosamond, whom he had easily
monopolised in a tête-à-tête, since Mrs. Vincy herself sat at the tea-table. She
resigned no domestic function to her daughter; and the matron's blooming
good-natured face, with the too volatile pink strings floating from her fine
throat, and her cheery manners to husband and children, was certainly among the
great attractions of the Vincy house - attractions which made it all the easier
to fall in love with the daughter. The tinge of unpretentious, inoffensive
vulgarity in Mrs. Vincy gave more effect to Rosamond's refinement, which was
beyond what Lydgate had expected.
    Certainly, small feet and perfectly turned shoulders aid the impression of
refined manners, and the right thing said seems quite astonishingly right when
it is accompanied with exquisite curves of lip and eyelid. And Rosamond could
say the right thing; for
