“You have studied music, probably?” said Rosamond.
“No, I know the notes of many birds, and I know many melodies by ear; but the music that I don’t know at all, and have no notion about, delights me—affects me. How stupid the world is that it does not make more use of such a pleasure within its reach!”
“Yes, and you will find Middlemarch very tuneless. There are hardly any good musicians. I only know two gentlemen who sing at all well.”
“I suppose it is the fashion to sing comic songs in a rhythmic way, leaving you to fancy the tune—very much as if it were tapped on a drum?”
“Ah, you have heard Mr. Bowyer,” said Rosamond, with one of her rare smiles. “But we are speaking very ill of our neighbors.”
Lydgate was almost forgetting that he must carry on the conversation, in thinking how lovely this creature was, her garment seeming to be made out of the faintest blue sky, herself so immaculately blond, as if the petals of some gigantic flower had just opened and disclosed her; and yet with this infantine blondness showing so much ready, self-possessed grace. Since he had had the memory of Laure, Lydgate had lost all taste for large-eyed silence: the divine cow no longer attracted him, and Rosamond was her very opposite. But he recalled himself.
“You will let me hear some music tonight, I hope.”
“I will let you hear my attempts, if you like,” said Rosamond. “Papa is sure to insist on my singing. But I shall tremble before you, who have heard the best singers in Paris. I have heard very little: I have only once been to London. But our organist at St. Peter’s is a good musician, and I go on studying with him.”
“Tell me what you saw in London.”