In fact, they flirted;
and Lydgate was secure in the belief that they did nothing else.
If a man could not love and be wise, surely he could flirt
and be wise at the same time? Really, the men in Middlemarch,
except Mr. Farebrother, were great bores, and Lydgate did not care
about commercial politics or cards: what was he to do for relaxation?
He was often invited to the Bulstrodes'; but the girls there were
hardly out of the schoolroom; and Mrs. Bulstrode's _naive_ way
of conciliating piety and worldliness, the nothingness of this
life and the desirability of cut glass, the consciousness at once
of filthy rags and the best damask, was not a sufficient relief from
the weight of her husband's invariable seriousness. The Vincys'
house, with all its faults, was the pleasanter by contrast; besides,
it nourished Rosamond--sweet to look at as a half-opened blush-rose,
and adorned with accomplishments for the refined amusement of man.
But he made some enemies, other than medical, by his success with
Miss Vincy. One evening he came into the drawing-room rather late,
when several other visitors were there. The card-table had drawn
off the elders, and Mr. Ned Plymdale (one of the good matches
in Middlemarch, though not one of its leading minds) was in
tete-a-tete with Rosamond. He had brought the last "Keepsake,"
the gorgeous watered-silk publication which marked modern progress
at that time; and he considered himself very fortunate that he could
be the first to look over it with her, dwelling on the ladies and
gentlemen with shiny copper-plate cheeks and copper-plate smiles,
and pointing to comic verses as capital and sentimental stories
as interesting.
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