d just opened and disclosed her;
and yet with this infantine blondness showing so much ready,
self-possessed grace. Since he had had the memory of Laure, Lydgate
had lost all taste for large-eyed silence: the divine cow no longer
attracted him, and Rosamond was her very opposite. But he recalled
himself.

"You will let me hear some music to-night, I hope."

"I will let you hear my attempts, if you like," said Rosamond. "Papa
is sure to insist on my singing. But I shall tremble before you, who
have heard the best singers in Paris. I have heard very little: I have
only once been to London. But our organist at St. Peter's is a good
musician, and I go on studying with him."

"Tell me what you saw in London."

"Very little." (A more naive girl would have said, "Oh, everything!"
But Rosamond knew better.) "A few of the ordinary sights, such as raw
country girls are always taken to."

"Do you call yourself a raw country girl?" said Lydgate, looking at her
with an involuntary emphasis of admiration, which made Rosamond blush
with pleasure. But she remained simply serious, turned her long neck a
little, and put up her hand to touch her wondrous hair-plaits--an
habitual gesture with her as pretty as any movements of a kitten's paw.
Not that Rosamond was in the least like a kitten: she was a sylph
caught young and educated at Mrs. Lemon's.

"I assure you my mind is raw," she said immediately; "I pass at
Middlemarch. I am not afraid of talking to our old neighbors. But I
am really afraid of you."

"An accomplished woman almost always knows more than we men, though her
knowledge is of a different sort. I am sure you could teach me a
thousand things--as an exquisite bird could teach a bear if there were
any common language between them. Happily, there is a common language
between women and men, and so the bears can get taught."

"Ah, there is Fred beginning to strum! I must go and hinder him from
jarring all your nerves," said Rosamond, moving to the other side of
the room, where Fred having opened the piano, at his father's desire,
that Rosamond might give them some music, was parenthetically
performing "Cherry Ripe!" with one hand. Able men who have passed
their examinations will do these things sometimes, not less than the
plucked Fred.

"Fred, pray defer your practising till to-morrow; you will make Mr.
Lydgate ill," said Rosamond. "He has an ear."

Fred laughed, and went on with his tune to the end.