. There was gathering within him
an amazed sense of his powerlessness over Rosamond. His superior knowledge and
mental force, instead of being, as he had imagined, a shrine to consult on all
occasions, was simply set aside on every practical question. He had regarded
Rosamond's cleverness as precisely of the receptive kind which became a woman.
He was now beginning to find out what that cleverness was - what was the shape
into which it had run as into a close network aloof and independent. No one
quicker than Rosamond to see causes and effects which lay within the track of
her own tastes and interests: she had seen clearly Lydgate's pre-eminence in
Middlemarch society, and could go on imaginatively tracing still more agreeable
social effects when his talent should have advanced him; but for her, his
professional and scientific ambition had no other relation to these desirable
effects than if they had been the fortunate discovery of an ill-smelling oil.
And that oil apart, with which she had nothing to do, of course she believed in
her own opinion more than she did in his. Lydgate was astounded to find in
numberless trifling matters, as well as in this last serious case of the riding,
that affection did not make her compliant. He had no doubt that the affection
was there, and had no presentiment that he had done anything to repel it. For
his own part he said to himself that he loved her as tenderly as ever, and could
make up his mind to her negations; but - well! Lydgate was much worried, and
conscious of new elements in his life as noxious to him as an inlet of mud to a
creature that has been used to breathe and bathe and dart after its illuminated
prey in the clearest of waters.
    Rosamond was soon looking lovelier than ever at her work-table, enjoying
drives in her father's phaeton and thinking it likely that she might be invited
to Quallingham. She knew that she was a much more exquisite ornament to the
drawing-room there than any daughter of the family, and in reflecting that the
gentlemen were aware of that, did not perhaps sufficiently consider whether the
ladies would be eager to see themselves surpassed.
    Lydgate, relieved from anxiety about her, relapsed into what she inwardly
called his moodiness - a name which to her covered his thoughtful preoccupation
with other subjects than herself, as well as that uneasy look of the brow and
distaste for all ordinary things as if they were mixed with bitter herbs, which
really made a sort of weather-glass to his vexation and foreboding. These latter
states of mind had
