His dull expectation of the usual disagreeable routine with an aged patient⁠—who can hardly believe that medicine would not “set him up” if the doctor were only clever enough⁠—added to his general disbelief in Middlemarch charms, made a doubly effective background to this vision of Rosamond, whom old Featherstone made haste ostentatiously to introduce as his niece, though he had never thought it worth while to speak of Mary Garth in that light. Nothing escaped Lydgate in Rosamond’s graceful behavior: how delicately she waived the notice which the old man’s want of taste had thrust upon her by a quiet gravity, not showing her dimples on the wrong occasion, but showing them afterwards in speaking to Mary, to whom she addressed herself with so much good-natured interest, that Lydgate, after quickly examining Mary more fully than he had done before, saw an adorable kindness in Rosamond’s eyes. But Mary from some cause looked rather out of temper.

“Miss Rosy has been singing me a song⁠—you’ve nothing to say against that, eh, doctor?” said Mr. Featherstone. “I like it better than your physic.”