"
"You are a devout worshipper, I perceive. You often see her,
I suppose."
"No," said Will, almost pettishly. "Worship is usually a matter
of theory rather than of practice. But I am practising it to excess
just at this moment--I must really tear myself away.
"Pray come again some evening: Mr. Lydgate will like to hear
the music, and I cannot enjoy it so well without him."
When her husband was at home again, Rosamond said, standing in
front of him and holding his coat-collar with both her hands,
"Mr. Ladislaw was here singing with me when Mrs. Casaubon came in.
He seemed vexed. Do you think he disliked her seeing him at our house?
Surely your position is more than equal to his--whatever may be his
relation to the Casaubons."
"No, no; it must be something else if he were really vexed,
Ladislaw is a sort of gypsy; he thinks nothing of leather and prunella."
"Music apart, he is not always very agreeable. Do you like him?"
"Yes: I think he is a good fellow: rather miscellaneous and
bric-a-brac, but likable."
"Do you know, I think he adores Mrs. Casaubon."
"Poor devil!" said Lydgate, smiling and pinching his wife's ears.
Rosamond felt herself beginning to know a great deal of the world,
especially in discovering what when she was in her unmarried girlhood
had been inconceivable to her except as a dim tragedy in by-gone costumes--
that women, even after marriage, might make conquests and enslave men.
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