Do you imagine that her rapid
forecast and rumination concerning house-furniture and society
were ever discernible in her conversation, even with her mamma?
On the contrary, she would have expressed the prettiest surprise
and disapprobation if she had heard that another young lady had been
detected in that immodest prematureness--indeed, would probably
have disbelieved in its possibility. For Rosamond never showed
any unbecoming knowledge, and was always that combination of
correct sentiments, music, dancing, drawing, elegant note-writing,
private album for extracted verse, and perfect blond loveliness,
which made the irresistible woman for the doomed man of that date.
Think no unfair evil of her, pray: she had no wicked plots,
nothing sordid or mercenary; in fact, she never thought of money except
as something necessary which other people would always provide.
She was not in the habit of devising falsehoods, and if her statements
were no direct clew to fact, why, they were not intended in that light--
they were among her elegant accomplishments, intended to please.
Nature had inspired many arts in finishing Mrs. Lemon's favorite pupil,
who by general consent (Fred's excepted) was a rare compound
of beauty, cleverness, and amiability.
Lydgate found it more and more agreeable to be with her, and there
was no constraint now, there was a delightful interchange of influence
in their eyes, and what they said had that superfluity of meaning
for them, which is observable with some sense of flatness by a
third person; still they had no interviews or asides from which
a third person need have been excluded.
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