“ Mr. Lydgate would say that was not worth knowing,” said Mr. Ned, purposely caustic.
“On the contrary,” said Lydgate, showing no smart; but smiling with exasperating confidence at Rosamond. “It would be worth knowing by the fact that Miss Vincy could tell it me.”
Young Plymdale soon went to look at the whist-playing, thinking that Lydgate was one of the most conceited, unpleasant fellows it had ever been his ill-fortune to meet.
“How rash you are!” said Rosamond, inwardly delighted. “Do you see that you have given offence?”
“What! is it Mr. Plymdale’s book? I am sorry. I didn’t think about it.”
“I shall begin to admit what you said of yourself when you first came here—that you are a bear, and want teaching by the birds.”
“Well, there is a bird who can teach me what she will. Don’t I listen to her willingly?”
To Rosamond it seemed as if she and Lydgate were as good as engaged. That they were some time to be engaged had long been an idea in her mind; and ideas, we know, tend to a more solid kind of existence, the necessary materials being at hand. It is true, Lydgate had the counter-idea of remaining unengaged; but this was a mere negative, a shadow cast by other resolves which themselves were capable of shrinking. Circumstance was almost sure to be on the side of Rosamond’s idea, which had a shaping activity and looked through watchful blue eyes, whereas Lydgate’s lay blind and unconcerned as a jellyfish which gets melted without knowing it.
That evening when he went home, he looked at his phials to see how a process of maceration was going on, with undisturbed interest; and he wrote out his daily notes with as much precision as usual.