Lydgate was a proud man towards whom
innuendoes were obviously unsafe, and throwing his hat on the floor was out of
the question. Mr. Vincy was a little in awe of him, a little vain that he wanted
to marry Rosamond, a little indisposed to raise a question of money in which his
own position was not advantageous, a little afraid of being worsted in dialogue
with a man better educated and more highly bred than himself, and a little
afraid of doing what his daughter would not like. The part Mr. Vincy preferred
playing was that of the generous host whom nobody criticises. In the earlier
half of the day there was business to hinder any formal communication of an
adverse resolve; in the later there was dinner, wine, whist, and general
satisfaction. And in the meanwhile the hours were each leaving their little
deposit and gradually forming the final reason for inaction, namely, that action
was too late.
    The accepted lover spent most of his evenings in Lowick Gate, and a
love-making not at all dependent on money-advances from fathers-in-law, or
prospective income from a profession, went on flourishingly under Mr. Vincy's
own eyes. Young love-making - that gossamer web! Even the points it clings to -
the things whence its subtle interlacings are swung - are scarcely perceptible:
momentary touches of finger-tips, meetings of rays from blue and dark orbs,
unfinished phrases, lightest changes of cheek and lip, faintest tremors. The web
itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys, yearnings of one
life towards another, visions of completeness, indefinite trust. And Lydgate
fell to spinning that web from his inward self with wonderful rapidity, in spite
of experience supposed to be finished off with the drama of Laure - in spite too
of medicine and biology; for the inspection of macerated muscle or of eyes
presented in a dish (like Santa Lucia's), and other incidents of scientific
inquiry, are observed to be less incompatible with poetic love than a native
dulness or a lively addiction to the lowest prose. As for Rosamond, she was in
the water-lily's expanding wonderment at its own fuller life, and she too was
spinning industriously at the mutual web. All this went on in the corner of the
drawing-room where the piano stood, and subtle as it was, the light made it a
sort of rainbow visible to many observers besides Mr. Farebrother. The certainty
that Miss Vincy and Mr. Lydgate were engaged became general in Middlemarch
without the aid of formal announcement.
    Aunt Bulstrode was again stirred