were no direct clue to
fact, why, they were not intended in that light - they were among her elegant
accomplishments, intended to please. Nature had inspired many arts in finishing
Mrs. Lemon's favourite pupil, who by general consent (Fred's excepted) was a
rare compound of beauty, cleverness, and amiability.
    Lydgate found it more and more agreeable to be with her, and there was no
constraint now, there was a delightful interchange of influence in their eyes,
and what they said had that superfluity of meaning for them, which is observable
with some sense of flatness by a third person; still they had no interviews or
asides from which a third person need have been excluded. In fact, they flirted;
and Lydgate was secure in the belief that they did nothing else. If a man could
not love and be wise, surely he could flirt and be wise at the same time?
Really, the men in Middlemarch, except Mr. Farebrother, were great bores, and
Lydgate did not care about commercial politics or cards: what was he to do for
relaxation? He was often invited to the Bulstrodes'; but the girls there were
hardly out of the schoolroom; and Mrs. Bulstrode's naïve way of conciliating
piety and worldliness, the nothingness of this life and the desirability of cut
glass, the consciousness at once of filthy rags and the best damask, was not a
sufficient relief from the weight of her husband's invariable seriousness. The
Vincys' house, with all its faults, was the pleasanter by contrast; besides, it
nourished Rosamond - sweet to look at as a half-opened blush-rose, and adorned
with accomplishments for the refined amusement of man.
    But he made some enemies, other than medical, by his success with Miss
Vincy. One evening he came into the drawing-room rather late, when several other
visitors were there. The card-table had drawn off the elders, and Mr. Ned
Plymdale (one of the good matches in Middlemarch, though not one of its leading
minds) was in tête-à-tête with Rosamond. He had brought the last Keepsake, the
gorgeous watered-silk publication which marked modern progress at that time; and
he considered himself very fortunate that he could be the first to look over it
with her, dwelling on the ladies and gentlemen with shiny copper-plate cheeks
and copper-plate smiles, and pointing to comic verses as capital and sentimental
stories as interesting. Rosamond was gracious, and Mr. Ned was satisfied that he
had the very best thing in