« replied Mr. Standish, who was not fond of Mr.
Bulstrode; »if you like him to try experiments on your hospital patients, and
kill a few people for charity, I have no objection. But I am not going to hand
money out of my purse to have experiments tried on me. I like treatment that has
been tested a little.«
    »Well, you know, Standish, every dose you take is an experiment - an
experiment, you know,« said Mr. Brooke, nodding towards the lawyer.
    »Oh, if you talk in that sense!« said Mr. Standish, with as much disgust at
such non-legal quibbling as a man can well betray towards a valuable client.
    »I should be glad of any treatment that would cure me without reducing me to
a skeleton, like poor Grainger,« said Mr. Vincy, the mayor, a florid man, who
would have served for a study of flesh in striking contrast with the Franciscan
tints of Mr. Bulstrode. »It's an uncommonly dangerous thing to be left without
any padding against the shafts of disease, as somebody said, - and I think it a
very good expression myself.«
    Mr. Lydgate, of course, was out of hearing. He had quitted the party early,
and would have thought it altogether tedious but for the novelty of certain
introductions, especially the introduction to Miss Brooke, whose youthful bloom,
with her approaching marriage to that faded scholar, and her interest in matters
socially useful, gave her the piquancy of an unusual combination.
    »She is a good creature - that fine girl - but a little too earnest,« he
thought. »It is troublesome to talk to such women. They are always wanting
reasons, yet they are too ignorant to understand the merits of any question, and
usually fall back on their moral sense to settle things after their own taste.«
    Evidently Miss Brooke was not Mr. Lydgate's style of woman any more than Mr.
Chichely's. Considered, indeed, in relation to the latter, whose mind was
matured, she was altogether a mistake, and calculated to shock his trust in
final causes, including the adaptation of fine young women to purple-faced
bachelors. But Lydgate was less ripe, and might possibly have experience before
him which would modify his opinion as to the most excellent things in woman.
    Miss Brooke, however, was not again seen by either of these gentlemen under
her maiden name. Not long after that dinner-party she had become Mrs. Casaubon,
and was