MIDDLEMARCH (Completed)

Chapter 31

How will you know the pitch of that great bell

Too large for you to stir? Let but a flute

Play 'neath the fine-mixed metal listen close

Till the right note flows forth, a silvery rill.

Then shall the huge bell tremble--then the mass

With myriad waves concurrent shall respond

In low soft unison.

Lydgate that evening spoke to Miss Vincy of Mrs. Casaubon,

and laid some emphasis on the strong feeling she appeared to have

for that formal studious man thirty years older than herself.

"Of course she is devoted to her husband," said Rosamond,

implying a notion of necessary sequence which the scientific

man regarded as the prettiest possible for a woman; but she

was thinking at the same time that it was not so very melancholy

to be mistress of Lowick Manor with a husband likely to die soon.

"Do you think her very handsome?"

"She certainly is handsome, but I have not thought about it,"

said Lydgate.

"I suppose it would be unprofessional," said Rosamond, dimpling.

"But how your practice is spreading! You were called in before

to the Chettams, I think; and now, the Casaubons."

"Yes," said Lydgate, in a tone of compulsory admission. "But I

don't really like attending such people so well as the poor.

The cases are more monotonous, and one has to go through more fuss

and listen more deferentially to nonsense."

"Not more than in Middlemarch," said Rosamond. "And at least you go

through wide corridors and have the scent of rose-leaves everywhere."

"That is true, Mademoiselle de Montmorenci," said Lydgate,

just bending his head to the table and lifting with his fourth finger

her delicate handkerchief which lay at the mouth of her reticule,

as if to enjoy its scent, while he looked at her with a smile.

But this agreeable holiday freedom with which Lydgate hovered

about the flower of Middlemarch, could not continue indefinitely.

It was not more possible to find social isolation in that town

than elsewhere, and two people persistently flirting could

by no means escape from "the various entanglements, weights,

blows, clashings, motions, by which things severally go on."

Whatever Miss Vincy did must be remarked, and she was perhaps the more

conspicuous to admirers and critics because just now Mrs. Vincy,

after some struggle, had gone with Fred to stay a little while at

Stone Court, there being no other way of at once gratifying old

Featherstone and keeping watch against Mary Garth, who appeared a less