ad been some
crisis in her husband's mind she was certain: he had the very next day
begun a new method of arranging his notes, and had associated her quite
newly in carrying out his plan. Poor Dorothea needed to lay up stores
of patience.

It was about four o'clock when she drove to Lydgate's house in Lowick
Gate, wishing, in her immediate doubt of finding him at home, that she
had written beforehand. And he was not at home.

"Is Mrs. Lydgate at home?" said Dorothea, who had never, that she knew
of, seen Rosamond, but now remembered the fact of the marriage. Yes,
Mrs. Lydgate was at home.

"I will go in and speak to her, if she will allow me. Will you ask her
if she can see me--see Mrs. Casaubon, for a few minutes?"

When the servant had gone to deliver that message, Dorothea could hear
sounds of music through an open window--a few notes from a man's voice
and then a piano bursting into roulades. But the roulades broke off
suddenly, and then the servant came back saying that Mrs. Lydgate would
be happy to see Mrs. Casaubon.

When the drawing-room door opened and Dorothea entered, there was a
sort of contrast not infrequent in country life when the habits of the
different ranks were less blent than now. Let those who know, tell us
exactly what stuff it was that Dorothea wore in those days of mild
autumn--that thin white woollen stuff soft to the touch and soft to the
eye. It always seemed to have been lately washed, and to smell of the
sweet hedges--was always in the shape of a pelisse with sleeves hanging
all out of the fashion. Yet if she had entered before a still audience
as Imogene or Cato's daughter, the dress might have seemed right
enough: the grace and dignity were in her limbs and neck; and about her
simply parted hair and candid eyes the large round poke which was then
in the fate of women, seemed no more odd as a head-dress than the gold
trencher we call a halo. By the present audience of two persons, no
dramatic heroine could have been expected with more interest than Mrs.
Casaubon. To Rosamond she was one of those county divinities not
mixing with Middlemarch mortality, whose slightest marks of manner or
appearance were worthy of her study; moreover, Rosamond was not without
satisfaction that Mrs. Casaubon should have an opportunity of studying
_her_. What is the use of being exquisite if you are not seen by the
best judges? and since Rosamond had received the highest compliments at
Sir Godw